Our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, tell us that the homelessness crisis in Britain is in fact people making a “lifestyle choice”. Especially those pesky foreigners.
Even her fellow Conservative, Bob Blackman, who heads up a group that aims to tackle homelessness thinks this is a phrase too far and believes she should use “wiser words”.
Amnesty has it right - claiming that there’s queues of people just longing to live the decadent luxury of shelter-free lifestyle is nothing but a “very convenient cop-out” for a Government whose repeated failures do nothing but exacerbate the crisis.
In reality the unhoused “lifestyle” is not so glamorous. A group of interested charities put together a letter better explaining the experience:
People sleeping rough frequently experience violence and abuse. The impact on their physical and mental health is significant. The average age of death for people experiencing homelessness is just 45 for men and 43 for women. This is not a life people choose.
The homelessness issue, particularly the more extreme cases where people find themselves forced to sleep on the streets, is especially frustrating because it’s also entirely unnecessary. We know how to solve it if we really wanted to.
Because we already did, back in early Covid times when the UK chose to find a way to house the vast majority of rough sleepers. Yes, under a Conservative government! Some of those provided shelter even gained access to assistance with things like benefit applications or medical treatments.
But apparently all decent and humane things have to come to an end. In July 2020 the funding was withdrawn and governmental responsibility for helping these people in need shirked - even whilst Covid was of course still very much circulating around.
Back to contemporary times where not only are we supposed to believe that living on the streets is universally nothing but a lifestyle choice, but that the largest threat to the fabric of British society is…tents.
So much so that the Home Secretary is seemingly trying to slot in a new policy that will fine any charity that gives a tent to a person without shelter. This seems to be a step too far for even many of the current Conservative party, so tbd on whether it makes it into the Kings Speech or not.
Either way, with ideas like this a certain contingent of today’s Conservative party does seem to have developed some real “The Cruelty Is The Point” vibes.