Sadiq Khan’s vow to "eliminate" rough sleeping by 2030 has moved further out of reach.Latest figures published by City Hall on Wednesday showed that 4,223 people were seen sleeping rough in London between April and June, up 29 per cent on the same period last year.The Standard spoke to Charlie Berry the Policy Officer at the charity Shelter to find out what needs to be done to tackle rough sleeping in the capital.
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00:00Rough sleeping in London has gone up by 29% since last year.
00:04Obviously this is incredibly concerning for us here at Shelter.
00:07The main cause of homelessness is not being able to afford a cost of a home.
00:12Private rents are at record levels and have been going up by huge amounts in recent years.
00:18And we've had decades of failure from central government to invest in the social housing
00:22that we need so that people can truly afford their rents.
00:25On top of this, we've been trapped in a cycle of freezes to housing benefit,
00:29which has made it incredibly difficult for people at the shelter and at the housing
00:32emergency to afford a home.
00:34Mayor Steve Carton has made a commitment to end rough sleeping by 2030.
00:39And we at Shelter really welcome that commitment.
00:41We really need local government to be doing everything that they can to tackle homelessness
00:45in all of its forms.
00:47But the figures that we've seen today show just how difficult it is for local government
00:51to do that on its own, even if it does have a clear plan and an ambition to end rough
00:56sleeping without the kind of investment in social housing from central government that
01:01we need.
01:02That's what's really going to support local government in the fight against homelessness
01:06and in ending the housing emergency for good.
01:09On top of that, we also have the fact that actually not everybody on the streets has
01:13a legal right to emergency accommodation, which makes it very difficult for local authorities
01:19to help them if they are rough sleeping.
01:22What we need to see change is that we need central government to start making the investment
01:27in social rent homes that will finally end homelessness.
01:31We need to build 90,000 social rent homes a year for 10 years across England to finally
01:36start really bringing down the number of people who are becoming homeless.
01:41Social rent is something that is the most important type of housing in tackling homelessness,
01:47because it's where rents are linked to local income.
01:50That means it's realistically the only sort of housing that's ever going to be affordable
01:54for people at risk of homelessness, where other types of what's called affordable housing,
01:59like shared ownership or rents that are 80% of market rent, are really out of reach for
02:06those who might otherwise be rough sleeping.
02:08London is already starting to build more social rent homes, and we need to see central government
02:13really start working with local governments to massively scale up the amount of social
02:18rent homes that we build.
02:20We also need to see everybody who's at risk of the streets actually having a legal right
02:25to accommodation, to make sure that they can at least access emergency accommodation and
02:30don't have to rough sleep.