U.K., Men and women in UK sleeping rough on the streets have  become an all-too-familiar sight,

 Vidya Ram*

The a For a visitor to the U.K., men and women sleeping rough on the streets, both in city centres and in suburban areas, have sadly become an all-too-familiar sight, but figures have shown that the situation has been getting consistently worse. Government figures published earlier this year revealed that the number of people sleeping rough had increased steeply for the seventh year in a row. Over 4,700 people were sleeping on the streets in the U.K. in 2017, a 15% rise from the year before.

In the recent years, there have been growing concerns about Britain’s stock of social housing. Now charities are fearful that money intended to be invested into the creation of more affordable housing is being redirected towards the removal and replacement of cladding (charity Shelter estimates there are 146 social housing buildings that still have the same unsafe cladding that accelerated the fire at Grenfell), suggesting that the government’s strategy of focussing on one or the other isn’t adequate. “You can’t solve homelessness without homes,” Shelter’s chief executive told the BBC earlier this week.

While London has the largest number of those sleeping rough, it was in northwest England where the numbers soared. Charities have warned that the figures are likely to be far higher, raising questions about the government’s ambitions to halve rough-sleeping by 2022 and to eradicate it in nine years.

Some trials have been taking place in recent years using strategies tested in other European countries. For example, Finland, where rough-sleeping hit over 4,700 in the 1980s, has eradicated it entirely, thanks to a “Housing First” scheme. However, in the U.K., it remains firmly in the pilot stage.

The government has stuck firmly to its targets, and earlier this week, announced a £100 million plan to tackle rough-sleeping. The news received a cautious welcome from charities, not least because it emerged that a substantial amount of the headline figure had already been pledged to tackle rough-sleeping and homelessness more widely, while the remainder was a “reprioritisation” of other budgets. (While the U.K. treats rough-sleeping as “people sleeping, or bedded down, in the open air” or living in buildings not “designed for habitation”, homelessness concerns a wider group of people who “do not have a legal right to occupy accommodation, or if their accommodation is unsuitable to live in”, according to homelessness charity, Shelter).

A group of charities has since called on the government to take steps to prevent homelessness in the first place, pointing to the urgent need for greater social housing and affordable accommodation. Others have pointed to cuts to welfare budgets that left many unable to cover the cost of housing, arguing that the government’s measures would do little without addressing the systemic issues.

Concerns about Britain’s social housing system came under the spotlight last year, following the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, which killed 72 people. While investigations into the fire are still ongoing, many had raised concerns about the existing housing system that gave tenants of social housing few means to effect change, even when major risks were identified.

It was in the late 1970s that former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought about major reforms to Britain’s sizeable stock of social housing. Properties were sold off under a scheme that enabled tenants to buy social housing at a substantial discount.

In the recent years, there have been growing concerns about Britain’s stock of social housing. Now charities are fearful that money intended to be invested into the creation of more affordable housing is being redirected towards the removal and replacement of cladding (charity Shelter estimates there are 146 social housing buildings that still have the same unsafe cladding that accelerated the fire at Grenfell), suggesting that the government’s strategy of focussing on one or the other isn’t adequate. “You can’t solve homelessness without homes,” Shelter’s chief executive told the BBC earlier this week.

(*Vidya Ram works for The Hindu and is based in London.uthor is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own)