The government has made a dramatic U-turn by announcing that, once more, people under 22 can claim housing benefit (HB). The decision to bar young people from claiming HB was taken by David Cameron in 2014. The then Chancellor, George Osborne, said at the time that jobless under-22s would no longer qualify for help with […]
Councils in England with high levels of rough sleepers will soon receive a share of a new £30m fund. A team of experts will be formed by government to help reduce the number of people living on the street, which has been rising for the last seven years. The measures aim to “break the homelessness […]
Almost 30,000 single parent families were made homeless last year, up 8% on five years ago, according to new official figures. Housing charity Shelter said that government figures also reveal that nearly three-quarters of homeless households in England are lone parent families. Shelter said lone parents were bearing the brunt of the housing crisis, by […]
New specialist teams will be employed to engage with rough sleepers and clean up areas of Liverpool city centre. According to a report in the Liverpool Echo, the city centre has numerous hotspots used by the homeless which need regular cleansing and the council says this has a knock-on effect on the rest of its […]
A fifth of England’s empty homes – just under 40,000 – are in the North West, a new report from the National Housing Federation (NHF) reveals. Statistically, the North West has the highest number of empty homes in the country – the same number of empty homes as the North East and Yorkshire and Humber […]
Newly appointed Minister for Homelessness, Heather Wheeler, admits she doesn’t know why homelessness and rough sleeping has exploded since the Tories took over, but denies it has anything to do with welfare reforms and council cuts. On a visit to a housing project in Glasgow, Wheeler told The Guardian she remained “totally confident” she would […]
Rough sleepers who have taken refuge in a disused building in central London face an uncertain future after a court approved their immediate eviction. Activists established the makeshift shelter in the four-storey Sofia House on Great Portland Street on March 1 as the so-called Beast from the East hit the UK. Dubbed the Sofia Solidarity Centre […]
Our lovely friends over at New Start have announced that their Leyland Road Hostel will be taking part in the Merseyside Youth Association’s Talent Match Programme – one of the first hostels to take part in the project. Talent Match has a team of mentors throughout the Liverpool City Region who work closely with individuals […]
A candidate running for a place in the US Senate has come up with the brilliant idea of arming homeless people with pump-action shotguns in an effort to reduce crime. (No, we’re not making this up!) According to a report in the Guardian, Brian Ellison, from Michigan, says homeless people are “constantly victims of violent […]
The multibillion-pound coffee industry has the power to change lives all along the supply chain, from people sleeping rough in the UK to farmers in the tropics, says a report in The Independent. For the past two years, a not-for-profit company called Change Please has employed homeless people as baristas to sell fresh coffee across […]
