Why are the council not tackling the growing camp in central London?

[Eesha]

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16036293/Tents-endless-thefts-local-shopkeepers-bathing-street-Romanian-Bulgarian-beggar-encampment-blighting-heart-London.html

I know its the Daily Fail but ive been past this area and its become really shocking. Its a huge camp now. Why aren't the council doing anything?

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast I could write an essay about what you've said, but yes

It feels totally hopeless and it feels as if no one can see a realistic point of view on this stuff.

Write it! Id read it! I think that if there’s lots of money to be made off the back of something, regardless if it’s detrimental, then it will continue.

We know that organised crime - people smugglers, are behind the movement of people globally. The Spanish president recently came out and said the large swathe of people who entered Ceuta was premeditated by a combination of disinformation and organised crime. This idea of ‘smashing the gangs,’ will be similar to trying to smash the drug cartels. The only way you are going to be effective is if you find a way to dissuade the people or if the punishment for smuggling is enough of a deterrent.

The legal system and charities are also earning well from it. Left and centric leaning governments are also beneficiaries due to the voting ratios of certain groups. Basically lots of fingers in the pie and a lack of desire to do anything to solve it. If the will of the people was there overall many things would be solved, but many people are happy with the levels of crime and squalor on the streets. That might be because they are far enough from it for it to be someone else’s problem, or because they have an idea that the people in tents require sympathy and charity and don’t really think about the potential for those people to actually be pickpockets and shoplifters.

This ^^

We're pathetically soft and it's wrecking the country.

Importing thieves and beggars, and allowing them to create shanty towns, is an extremist policy - but the 'be kind' supporters consider themselves to be mainstream and 'nice'.

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast sadly I think a lot of people genuinely don’t look at their environment or don’t care about it

I’ll just make myself even more depressed if I write about it. A lot of it is covered in Michael Shellenberger “SanFransicko”. I’ve just looked that up and it was actually written five years ago - but things have apparently proved over there while our decline continues. I suppose it will have to get to those levels before anyone does anything about it here, and in reality they won’t do anything about it which really worries me.

It doesn’t mention people smugglers by the way. That is a whole other massive topic. Everything is built like that now - I mean all these shadowy organisations are built like the spiders web except you will never find the centre in order to smash it …. Same model for a lot of terror groups.

I rather like the rise of the YouTube detectives ferreting this stuff out. The guy that uncovered the mass fraud in America caused an absolutely shitstorm, so much so they created a new law in California to prevent further disclosures of fraud by civilians asking uncomfortable questions.

We need much more of it from my POV. Hold these people to account. Journalists are no longer the persistent hacks seeking out the truth, it’s a whole other industry nowadays.

Councils are not legally obliged to house all homeless people. They are legally obliged to house only families and vulnerable (eg disabled/mentally ill) people. They turn away non disabled single people and couples.

I can’t understand why the powers that be (Sadiq Khan) planning to pedestrianise Oxford Street can’t foresee what will happen. It will just be a tent city.

I went to Portland in Oregon a while ago. A few tents and all the liberals were loving it: feeding the homeless, donating money - so warm - and then the inevitable happened and it became a magnet and is now a complete dump. A scary dump to boot. Seattle similar.

Closer to home, a dog-walking acquaintance lives in a shared-ownership property. Next door is a Roma family in a council-owned house. She was steaming that not only is their property trashed, but they periodically skip off back to their European home.

It absolutely beats me that you can get a house here when you own property abroad. I suppose it’s impossible to check what with different names etc.

In half the social housing in London, the main tenant, was born abroad.

Which for young single people means the council gives them a tent and a sleeping bag.

But over two-thirds of the actually 47% of London's lead SH tenants born abroad, are UK citizens who hold a British passport, with a large number of them from 'commonwealth' countries who where invited here.

I.

To be fair, if journalists do try to do this, they are liable to get a visit from the police as did the journalist who probed Jason Arday, the fake Cambridge "professor."

Well yes the council can barely keep up with what is going on 3 feet from their offices, let alone sending investigators around the world to check for international property deeds.
I'm on a local council/social housing Facebook group and people are constantly complaining about families having a 'dole drop' ie a second council property for the purposes of receiving benefits as a 'separate' couple. Apparently the council don't care about this, so very unlikely to care who owns what in Romania or elsewhere.

There needs to be some sort of task force to deal with this c**p. Dn rents a Peabody place (nice social housing properties in London) from someone who comes and collects the rent in cash, and who has various bills coming to the property in his name. Obviously dn and flatmate pay vastly inflated rent over the official rent.

Any of these systems designed to help people get gamed. It’s a massive industry. Investigating and unravelling the fraud is undoubtedly expensive which is probably why it doesn’t happen.

The Park Lane one and the one on Oxford St is mainly Roma. The ones near Charing X/Cov Gdn/Waterloo seem mainly British but also some Roma people. The lady who stabbed the people in Cov Gdn was from one of the camps and was Romanian. I don’t think it will be the first issue or the last issue they cause round there.

Come in on a dinghy and get housed straight away. Where is the fairness in that ?

Exactly .
Two issues here : beggars in gangs from abroad are a threat to us and the govs first duty is to protect us
So they need too.

Secondly UK homeless people are care leavers ,abused , mentally unwell and can't get help and vulnerable and need oodles of money and multi pronged support.

There was a Mumsnetter a few years ago who was a lawyer for the Home Office, who said the system was widely abused. Legal tenants regularly sublet to others and pocket the difference. This was the reason it was impossible to ID some of the Grenfell Tower victims

An African woman was found to have a council flat in Walworth even though her husband was the president of Sierra Leone!

Government cannot keep asking people to pay more and more taxes if they make no effort to crack down on this.

@MaturingCheeseball we are babies and they are taking milk off us.

At the very least we need a proper shit hot task force soley on this type of specialized crime from certain countries
I believe the student loans fiasco has 1 in 7 absonders from an aforementioned country as well.

@TonTonMacoute totally agree.

Sorry but this narrative that non white homeless people are automatically a threat and get preferential treatment and white locals who are homeless are all salt of the earth deserving victims is completely false.

No idea about this case, but just because someone's husband is a President of a country does not make it implausible that she is entitled to social housing. They may be married on paper only, she fled DV and do on. The wife of one of the richest royal families in the world is an asylum seeker in the UK.

Why should we house them, we already have a housing shortage

I think they should be asked to leave the UK, why do they have to be here in the first place?

So your DN and friend are happy to be part of corruption preventing homeless people and families from being housed, and you're good with that?

You could put an end to that bit of corrupt behavior from your DN and the tenant, and free that flat up for someone desperate and actually entitled to live there, with just a phone call.

Please don't abuse the Grenfell Tower victims to push your narrative.

All the 72 people who died where identified and all where legal tenants. There was never an issue IDing them beyond the fact some ion the top floors including children, were entirely cremated by the heat of the fire. Who they were was known early because of their calls to the fire brigade, and families. One was a terrified 12 year old, taken in in the midst of it and looked after by the neighbors she died with. Formally scientifically confirming what was known required detailed forensics.

Six chancers jumped on the false narrative being spread that tenants where sub letting, and tried to pass themselves off as 'having lost homes and relatives' in the fire. Most where jailed for it.

The claim the dead were in some way dodgy is a narrative pushed by the guilty and the hateful.