New research by the housing charity Shelter shows that there will be 135,000 homeless children this Christmas – an increase of seven thousand in just two years.
The number of people sleeping rough has also doubled under the Tories to 5,000 – and the number of people dying homeless has risen by more than half in just the last five years – to 726 last year.
Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said:
It is shameful that after ten years of the Conservatives in Government, 135,000 children will be without a home this Christmas.
Rising homelessness is a direct result of decisions made by the Tories: slashing investment in new low-cost homes, refusing to help private renters and making huge cuts to housing benefit and homelessness services.
The Conservatives’ manifesto makes clear they have no plan to tackle the crisis of rising homelessness. A Labour Government will end rough sleeping within five years and fix the root causes of rising homelessness with the biggest council and social housing programme since the 1960s, stronger rights for renters and extra funding for homelessness services.”
The Conservative manifesto contained no additional funding for social housing and no new measures to combat rising homelessness or rough sleeping.
The Labour manifesto sets out a plan to end rough sleeping within five years, with 150,000 council and social homes a year, new funding for homelessness services and housing benefit and a charter of renters’ rights.
A Channel 4 Dispatches programme went out on Monday night showing the plight of the UK’s more than four million children living in poverty:
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I am becoming almost lost for words of such cruelty in a country of so much wealth.
You are right Joseph. It amazes me that people care so little about others particularly helpless children and have to be coaxed to vote for a party that will end child poverty and homelessness.
But, didn’t you know?
‘Tess’ said if they have a roof over their heads they’re NOT homeless.
And gobshites will STILL vote toerag because they ‘like boris’ and to get brexit done.
So starving, homeless kids don’t matter.
I hope these twunts with these fucking idiotic views and planning on voting toerag are the first to be found at the shit end of the privatised health service stick; waiting years for a hip replacement or cataract treatment because they can’t afford the insurance to cover it, or can’t get the insurance because of previous health issues.
Fuck ’em. They’ll get what THEY deserve.
Totally agree.
If you ask me, the politically unconscious shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a polling station. These “been Labour all my life but now I’m voting Tory” types would’ve been big fans of Oswald Moseley. Fuck em. We’re well shot!
“Previous health issues” denial of insurance is god’s way of culling the herd and keeping His hands clean.
The cognitive dissonance of the christian right in the US is boundless – it lets them deny abortion and deny medical treatment to the unaborted, both in the name of god’s will, and still sleep soundly in smug righteousness.
We should never forget that the US constitution obliges it always to placate the best-armed stupid people on the planet.