How the city’s miracle has been left in tatters
ALMOST exactly 18 months ago something miraculous happened on the streets of Leicester. People stopped sleeping rough.
The government told every council to bring “everyone in” to stop the spread of coronavirus. And it worked.
Within less than a fortnight, rough sleeping was virtually eliminated, not just in Leicester but in London, Leeds, Liverpool, and almost everywhere else in the UK. A government target to end rough sleeping scheduled for some time in 2025 was achieved before the end of April 2020.
In Leicester, the city council put together a support package for about 150 people, providing not only a safe place to sleep but also hot food and medical care.
It was a model of good practice, put together in next to no time. Amazing stuff.
But it is important to remember that rough sleeping is just the tip of the homelessness iceberg. The vast majority of homelessness remains hidden and was not addressed by the Everyone In programme.
What the programme demonstrated is how quickly the problem of rough sleeping can be resolved. All that is required is the political will.
Having succeeded in dramatically reducing rough sleeping, the government then pulled the plug on the money necessary to continue with the programme.
Local authorities were asked to continue, it if at all possible and Leicester City Council, to its credit, tried to do so, spending its own local funds.
Unfortunately, the very rules suspended by the government as part of Everyone In are being reapplied. What this means is that the city council cannot legally continue to provide a place to sleep for some people desperately in need of one.
As part of the immigration rules the government created a category of people “without recourse to public funds”, including any help from local authorities. It is part of the socalled “hostile environment”.
People sleeping rough do not typically have lots of paperwork demonstrating their entitlement to anything. Mostly, they just have the clothes they are standing up in.
In the next week or two, the Everyone
In programme in Leicester is being reversed. Everyone without recourse to public funds will be back out on the streets – about another 20 rough sleepers – for no sensible reason.
Not only the people concerned will suffer. We all will. Our society is diminished by its unwillingness to help homeless people – unwillingness, not inability.
David Brazier, Shelter Housing Advice and Research Project
(Leicester)