YP Letters: Shameful to see so many evicted and homeless

Is enough being done to counter homelessness?

WE need to be disturbed by the continuing rise in UK homelessness, and of forcible bailiff evictions which in England and Wales reached a scandalous 42,758 in 2015 – up 53 per cent from 2010 since the displacement of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. In Flintshire, the housing list has risen by 33 per cent over the year now ending.

The homelessness charity Crisis predicts a rise of over 25 per cent over the next 10 years. It predicts that the number of rough sleepers, now 9,100, will go up by 76 per cent to 16,000 this decade. These figures do not include today’s 68,300 “sofa-surfers” or 61,500 people in hostels or unsuitable temporary accommodation.

It is shameful that our nation, the world’s “fifth richest”, suffers this growing deprivation, with Crisis identifying welfare cuts as prime cause.

The Child Poverty Action Group highlights “general and specific cuts in benefits, tax credits and universal credit” in real terms as a result of the four- year freeze imposed in April 2016, whilst any subsidies are “not well targeted on low income families”.

It behoves us to support the call by Bishop Rachel Treweek of Gloucester for the freeze to be abandoned.