The number of people sleeping rough in England has increase by 20 per cent in a single year, according to The Big Issue.

Here are the figures:

The annual rough sleeping snapshot found an estimated 4,667 people were homeless on the streets on a single night in autumn 2024, up a fifth and 769 people on the 3,898 people counted in 2023.

The rise is the third consecutive year in which rough sleeping has increased but remains 2% lower than the 2017 peak when frontline workers counted 4,751 people.

The number of people sleeping rough more than doubled under the Tories with 1,768 counted in 2010 when the party first came into office. The 2024 total remains 164% higher than 15 years ago.

We know this was all planned by the Conservatives, as led by David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

The Bedroom Tax, the Benefit Cap, Council Tax reduction schemes that pay less than the previous Council Tax Benefit, and Universal Credit conditionality all made it harder for people to stay in their homes.

Soaring rents and mortgages in turn made it impossible for people to get homes in the first place.

The Labour government is committed to ending rough sleeping and homelessness, with a promise to invest £1 billion in the project. A full strategy for ending homelessness is promised by the summer.

But don’t get your hopes up.

This is Keir Starmer’s neoliberal Labour-In-Name-Only party that wants to cut benefits even more than the Tories did – while still denying the poorest of us the basic income that we need to cover the rapidly-rising cost of living.

Keeping people housed has huge knock-on benefits because it reduces demand on the police and the health service – as an experiment in Utah proved more than a decade ago.

But that was by providing social housing – and how will Labour do that when its project to create 1.5 million new dwellings relies on partnerships with private – profit-grubbing – developers?

This Writer fears homelessness will only worsen – until a government is elected that understands what is necessary to end it.

Source: Rough sleeping in England soars by 20% in just a year – Big Issue

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