The Government has this week announced a review into the wider causes of rough sleeping, along with £236m in funding to help people off the streets. Adrian Jackson, Cardboard Citizens’ Artistic Director and CEO, writes:
Street Homelessness is visibly back to the levels it was when Cardboard Citizens started in the early 1990s, born from the street homeless community in the Bullring in Waterloo.
We of course welcome the government’s announcement of these funds directed towards the reduction of rough sleeping.
At the same time, we need to be clear that this funding will not in itself be enough. To coin a phrase, we would welcome the government being tough on rough sleeping but even tougher on the causes of rough sleeping – which means tackling homelessness at its core, undoing the results of years of austerity, building more houses and reinstating the homeless services which have been diminished over the past decade.
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