Has visible homelessness increased where you live?

[allabouttheboy]

Where I live you see more people sleeping on the streets and more tents dotted about on odd patches of land.
Is it happening where you live too? Is anyone doing anything about this?

Yes. In north London.

I report to street link every time and seems to be helping.

What I'm struggling with is the drunken and abusive behaviour that accompanies some of them. There's a man whose now a permanent fixture outside my tube station, drunk and yelling abuse into the air as you walk past. I hate it, especially late at night when I'm on my own

Not particularly, there's always been a persistent homeless population who choose this or find it preferable to alternatives especially in summer (I run a project so know their backgrounds and stories). One recurring reason is that the shelter that provides en suite single rooms and 3 meals a day doesn't allow drugs or alcohol on the premises and crucially they get stopped £30 out of their weekly uc (housing allowance and social services pays for the rest) £30 a week for 21 meals, all bills paid including free wifi - they aren't interested in food and want to spend it on alcohol

I was asking about whether people had seen an increase. There is where I live. It is very obvious.

No in rural Perthshire.

Not where I live tbh. I’m fairly rural and surrounded by small market towns. homeless people often seem to congregate in larger cities.

Yes, small, crappy town in the west midlands. It’s a dump with very high unemployment yet rents have increased dramatically. It’s the sort of town you avoid at all costs, and yet a two bedroom house with crap schools, no amenities and loads of crime will set you back £800 a month.

I don’t know how people are coping.

Lots more rough sleepers, LOTS more people out of their face on spice staggering around too.

It's increased in my city. We now have a whole area of the city centre where the sleeping bags go out as soon as the businesses close.

Zone 2 London, it has been fairly stable over the past couple of years although it dropped during the most restricted part of Covid (there were specific policies to get people off the streets). They have always been very present on the streets, outside the tube, but get quite a bit of help from local support groups and aren't any bother to people going about their lives.

Yes 100% well probably more than 100% here in greater Manchester. Even in the towns but definitely when you go into Manchester itself it's really bad .