Homeless to have tents banned

Also- many who have ended up on the streets have been evicted from temporary supported accommodation due to violence and risk to staff, making themselves intentionally homeless and removing the statutory duty to be housed.
again not popular but that is the reality.

Alwaysanotherwine your post is spot on. I also don’t want to say what I do but I have extensive experience in homelessness and until people start being honest about what the real issues are and stop making up excuses and blaming policy makers solutions won’t be found.
The reality is there are people with very complex lives and no amount of money is going to fix this. The damage is done in childhood and it takes a holistic approach to deal with it.
Someone above said about young people not being able to return home- that may be true in some cases but actually in many cases it is teens who are out of control with parents who simply can’t manage them who then ask them to leave, as opposed to parents who are bad people (they are often vulnerable themselves). They then run away to cities as they are bored in more parochial areas and their problems escalate. That is the reality.

It's the usual Tory tactic of misdirection and also taking a hard line on the symptoms rather than the cause because its easier and looks decisive. It's much easier to say, "we said we'd ban tents and there are now 70% less of them, look how effective our policies are". Yep, good for you, you've shunted the problem elsewhere but it makes for a good soundbite doesn't it?

The fact is our systems are so fragmented and disconnected that we can't get to the root causes of homelessness. High-level policy just can't filter down and penetrate effectively at ground level. We've failed miserably at recognising what meaningful support for mental health and addictions looks like (for anyone, never mind the homeless). Housing policy is failing us and the economic cluster fuck were currently in is only going to make things worse for the foreseeable future. But yes, let's declare war on tents.

In London for nearly a decade they have relied on Churches to provide zero temperature accommodation.

i know become my nearest Church which is 5 minutes away had their clergy involved. They don't use the Church building as it is too cold. Then I found out one of my brothers started doing shifts at his more modern church building when his kids were teenage. (This is all mainstream protestant Christian denominations/sects.)

When I read this morning I thought it had to be click bait but no she truly means it
I cannot stand this vile
Women she just gets worse
In my
Opinion
Disgusting

Resources have been cut and then cut again.

In my area they stopped overnight shelter when the temperature hits zero in the winter. They changed it to a hot evening meal then out you go at 9pm. This year they stopped the hot meal. I could fucking cry.

Barbaric indeed.

What is Braverman up to?
She is shifting the narrative. Even old Tory voters might have a heart somewhere so she is telling them it is a 'lifestyle choice'. That they don't want safe accommodation, they want to clutter up market towns with their tents !! Don't blame your government, blame the poor, blame the sick, blame the most vulnerable people.

@Alwaysanotherwine do you think those rules might be part of the problem? On the surface, I understand why having them makes sense because you don’t want a shelter filled with delinquency but surely a person is going to be better able to deal with drugs/ mental health etc if they have a roof over their head. Similarly, it’s probably easier for services to support people with a fixed address.

I’m going to need a source for this, because everything that I have found has suggested that immigrants are net contributors. The only thing that suggests that it might be otherwise is that it’s acknowledged there are gaps in the data. What you were saying does not make sense because a lot of immigrants do not have access to welfare services. Work visas, student visas, family visas all have restrictions.

Then re building homes, you are assuming that every migrant will need social housing. Firstly, that is not the case and secondly I specifically suggested a targeted approach, building houses for people who are homeless. At no point did I say that we should be building homes for every immigrant. It would not be necessary, most immigrants find housing via the private market, this is the case because they work. Hence working is relevant.

Well said Tonkerbea, couldn’t agree more - and a massive fuck off from me too !

Nobody 'wants' it anywhere! What we want is for people to be able to access affordable housing and support. You seem to be more concerned about commerce than human beings 🤷🏻‍♀️

This.
she’s a waste of space.
She should be ashamed of herself and her party for this comment and for what they’ve done to England in the last 13 years.
She should be embarrassed.
And why are they not looking at WHY so many people end up on the streets and what they can do to put an end to poverty/mental health problems etc in families.
Shame on you Tories.

This is not true. There is a statutory duty for accommodation tk be provided for families with children, pregnant women and extremely vulnerable single people. And the threshold for vulnerable is so high it’s not what any ordinary person would consider vulnerable. So most of the people you see on the streets don’t have a statutory obligation owing to them.

What sort of Government Minister looks at the Britain of 2023 and thinks “You know, what’s really wrong with this picture is that homeless people are allowed to sleep in tents.”

Was there really nothing else on your desk Suella?

Local authorities and hence the government figures only record empty homes based upon council tax returns. Since one only gets a year's reduction in council tax if one gets a reduction for claiming a home is empty, the government figures are likely to be a signficant under-counting.
In fact some councils increase council tax for empty properties.

Whether the figure is nearly 700,000 or over a million that is still a lot of empty homes, and puts a lie to the UK having a housing crisis.

The UK does though have a housing distribution crisis.

Not sure where that figure comes from, but HoC figures don’t back that up.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) publishes data on homes classed as empty for Council Tax purposes. In October 2022, there were 676,304 recorded empty homes in England. This is a 3.6% increase on the previous year’s total. 248,149 were classed as ‘long-term vacant’ properties (vacant for more than six months with some exceptions).

Local authorities already have powers under EHDMO, but few seem to use them and they are complicated. The LibDems did look in to this in detail a number of years ago.

Properties can be empty in the short-term for a myriad of reasons, it doesn’t make them available or suitable for homeless people, or in the right areas.

i kind of agree with her

i know a couple of people who work with homeless charities in liverpool

they say they have enough space and beds to house all homeless in area

but they have rules etc they have to abide by so people on drugs or who want to beg out of that area refuse their help

i also know people who have been homeless who say they have been offered endless supprt

i won’t say what i do work wise as it’s possible outing , but i know from my experience that a lot of homeless people are stuck due to drugs, relationships and historical behaviour

but it’s also true that if people like myself (no drugs, retraining orders etc) found ouraelves homeless tomorrow, we would have help and wouldn’t have to sleep in streets

This. How this would even begin to be enforced us beyond me. What are the police going to do - rip the tent away and leave the homeless person in their sleeping bag on the ground? What would that achieve, even supposing it ever happened, which it won't?

It's just more pathetic calls to their voter base who love stuff like this.

God I bloody hate the lot of them. Just awful, awful people.

I think this is her preferred option.

I work in a city centre and I know that homelessness is not as easy as going to a shelter.

It is very much like Rishi's electric car announcement. Is a vote loser and also isn't actually ever going to happen because a) the manufacturers are already planning for 2030 and b) he didn't think to change the law so manufacturers could sell you an infernal combustion engine car anyway.

Suella Braverman is a twat of the highest order.

Nothing that comes out of her mouth should even warrant 10 seconds of brain space.

That’s exactly my point. And whether we should is also relevant.

In the interests of factual accuracy I would like to point out that in England alone there are estimated to be over a million empty homes.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/scandinavia-has-a-migrant-friendly-reputation-but-is-that-changing/

https://migrants-refugees.va/country-profile/nordic-countries/

This is a neat example of Braverman's stupidity. A policy that is pretty much unenforceable, and that isn't even a vote winner.

I am seeing little evidence of that on mumsnet, or was her research just in those voters that she is interested in = Tory party members?