There has been a 24 per cent rise in the number of people seen rough sleeping in London compared to the same time last year. Please find below a Centrepoint comment responding.
The numbers come from the CHAIN report which looks at the number of people seen sleeping rough in London.. In total during the period July-September 2022 outreach teams recorded 3,628 individuals sleeping rough in the capital.
283 (8%) of those were young people. This is a slight increase compared to the previous year and higher than pre-pandemic levels (250 young people in July – September 2019).
Billy Harding, Centrepoint’s Policy and Research Manager, said:
“All the indications were that rough sleeping and homelessness have been rising sharply – but the scale of this increase is shocking.
“The experience at the start of the pandemic was that, if you get people off the streets and into stable accommodation, you give them a real chance to escape homelessness. That level of investment hasn’t been sustained since then and the prospect of further cuts to benefits and public services means we now face the terrifying prospect of record numbers of people sleeping rough during the winter months.
“There are many reasons why people end up on the streets but the solutions are well-established. We need to see affordable housing being built, a benefit system that better reflects the true cost-of-living and sustained funding that supports local government and charities delivering homelessness services. Without that investment, the rising cost of energy, bills and accommodation will be matched with increased levels of street homelessness.”
