No one should have to sleep on the streets.
That should not be a controversial ambition in one of the richest countries in the world. Yet for too long, we have become used to seeing people bedding down in shop doorways, outside stations and on our high streets.
I don’t believe we should ever accept that as inevitable.
That is why I welcome the Labour Government’s announcement of a major new national drive to ensure that everyone sleeping rough is offered a route off the streets by Christmas.
The programme is backed by an additional £442 million, taking the Government’s total commitment to tackling homelessness and rough sleeping over the next three years to more than £4 billion.
But what matters most is what that investment can mean for people.
For some, it will mean somewhere safe and warm to sleep. For others, getting off the streets will also require support with mental health, addiction, employment or rebuilding the stability in their lives that homelessness can so quickly take away. The programme recognises that getting somebody through a door is only the beginning: support has to be there to help them stay off the streets for good.
Building on our work in Southampton
This matters enormously here in Southampton.
I have spent time with some of the fantastic organisations working with people experiencing homelessness in our city, including going out with Southampton Street Pastors and seeing first-hand the compassion and determination of those working on the frontline.
Their work can be genuinely transformative. But when I spoke about this issue last year, I was clear that charities, volunteers and local services cannot tackle homelessness alone. They need Government to provide the resources and wider support necessary to help people rebuild their lives.
That is why I was so pleased last year to help secure an additional £660,000 for Southampton to support people facing homelessness and housing insecurity, with a particular focus on prevention and helping families in temporary accommodation.
This new national commitment takes that work significantly further.
It means urgent action this winter, but it is also designed to create more settled accommodation and intensive support for people who have experienced long-term rough sleeping.
We have to prevent homelessness too
For me, one part of this announcement is particularly important: we cannot simply become better at responding to homelessness after it happens. We have to become much better at preventing it.
Nobody should have to reach the point of sleeping in a doorway before the system notices them.
That means intervening earlier when somebody is at risk of losing their tenancy. It means tackling the causes that can push people towards homelessness. It means properly joining up housing, health, mental health, addiction services and employment support. And it means ensuring people have somewhere genuinely sustainable to move on to.
The Government’s wider plan is explicitly shifting the system towards homelessness prevention, tenancy sustainment and earlier intervention so that fewer people ever reach the point of sleeping rough.
That is the direction I want us to pursue here in Southampton as well.
Bringing Southampton together
The Government cannot achieve this from Westminster alone.
Councils, charities, health services, faith groups, businesses and community organisations all have a part to play. Some of the best expertise about what works already exists among the organisations working on our streets every day.
So over the coming months, I look forward to working with organisations across Southampton to ensure we end rough sleeping this winter and use this moment to bolster our preventative measures so we can end rough sleeping for good.
I want us to ask not simply how we find someone a bed tonight, important though that is, but what needs to happen tomorrow, next month and next year to make sure they never have to return to the streets.
Homelessness and rough sleeping remain a moral stain on our society.
But they are not inevitable.
With national Government providing the investment and determination, and organisations across Southampton working together locally, we have an opportunity to change lives, restore dignity and give people the security of somewhere safe to call home.
This winter, our immediate mission must be clear: offer everyone a route off the streets. Our longer-term ambition must be bigger still — to make sure nobody has to sleep there in the first place.