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Labour pledges ‘moral mission’ to end homelessness with £600m hostels fund
The Labour Party has pledged a “moral mission” to save lives at Christmas by putting £600m towards creating ‘modern hostels’ for homeless people.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow housing secretary John Healey have pledged to eradicate rough sleeping within five years.
The plans will see £600m spent on modern hostels, which will provide accommodation for 5,000 homeless people. A £200m hostels transformation fund will see existing hotels turned into places where homeless people can stay and “turn their lives around”.
A further £100m-a-year scheme will be created for emergency winter shelters, which will start this winter and get people off the streets during the cold weather.
Labour has also promised 4,000 additional Housing First homes, which are designed to help rough sleepers into permanent housing, and 4,000 permanent ‘move on’ homes will also be built.
The pledge comes as research by charity Shelter found that a child becomes homeless every eight minutes in the UK. Fellow homeless charity St Mungo’s warned that nearly 9,000 places for homeless people have disappeared since 2010.
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According to Labour, the package will be backed up with an additional £1bn-a-year fund that will be earmarked for council budgets to pay for staffing and support and to relink Local Housing Allowance with local rents – both are major pledges contained in the party’s manifesto to tackle homelessness. Labour states it is the biggest pledge to tackle homeless in 20 years.
Rough sleeping has more than doubled since 2010, and the number of people dying homeless has risen by 50% in the past five years – totalling 726 people last year.
Mr Corbyn said: “One person sleeping rough is one too many.
“No one wants to live in a society where thousands of homeless people are left out in the cold on the streets.
“Labour will save lives this winter and end rough sleeping within five years. That’s real change.”
Mr Healey said: “Rising homelessness shames us all in a country as well off as ours.
“It shames the Conservative Party most of all, because it is Conservative decisions to slash funding for hostels, housing benefit, homelessness services and new homes that are directly responsible for this increase in people living and dying on our streets.
“With Labour this will change. We need a new moral mission to save lives this winter and end rough sleeping within five years.”
