The problem of rough sleeping in central London has got to endemic proportions - with one in 25 of the Westminster population being homeless - residents will tell you, it was only a matter of time before someone was killed like this. Lining every street around the central London area are hundreds, if not thousands, of rough sleepers; almost all have mental health and addiction problems, there are constant fights, and many residents have had to call ambulances to treat overdosed addicts on our doorsteps. Whilst there is much talk of the housing crisis in London - with rising rents and property prices crippling those on low (and even medium) wages - by the time someone is sleeping rough on the streets in the centre of London, they need more help than just a house.
Imagine for a minute, you were made homeless: if you did not have the opportunity to stay with friends or family, had no recourse for state assistance and nowhere indoors to sleep, what would you do? Would your choice be to hide in a quiet park, or sleep in the alleyway next to the busiest streets in the country? Keep a low profile and try get back some sense of normality, or sit on a street corner in Soho begging for change?
Let's be honest here - for someone to be on the streets in central London for months or even years, it's because their addictions and/or violent behaviour has got them kicked out of every hostel and they get more money for drugs begging to tourists - not just because 'houses cost to much'. The presence of so many rough sleepers on the streets of central London represent more than just a failure of housing - there is a deeper failure of mental health and social services that have allowed so many to end up addicted to drugs and sleeping on the streets. Rather than more hostel beds & council blocks, we need more beds in rehab and mental health facilities, and assistive accommodation that helps treat people's problems rather than just putting a roof over their head; being practical, this will never be located in central London.
I don't agree, you have gone left.
ReplyDeleteThe government is never the solution, they can never be the solution. When government power is drawn back (taxes etc.), there should be more money going to real everyday people, with a meritocracy meaning the hard working ones profit the most. Then outreach the work to private charities, private hospitals and churches, and have those peoples own families deal with these people. (Peoples own families can do that hard intervention a lot better than government ever could, it is more frightening if done by government than family, a family member has more licence to nag).
I have talked to homeless people before, the South where I live is a nicer area than London no matter what some people say. I find that homeless people are not so without virtue from the ones I have interacted with.
The government is the cause of this problem to begin with. They are not going to give any new resources. Funding to homeless people has halved and homelessness has doubled. They need to be removed from the equation.
Wanting better, more effective and efficient government services is leftie? Well perhaps I lean left on this issue. Frankly, I think not wanting people dying on the streets is common human decency, not a left or right issue...
ReplyDeleteGovernment is needed to provide solutions, and the problems seems to be that politicians, the media and campaigners are only focusing on housing as a solution when there is a much wider problem. I'll be posting more about the problems with the work charities do for the homeless in future - fundamentally, they reinforce people's status as homeless. Wider problems with state services are a massive causative factor in the issue of rough sleeping.
My point is that those sleeping rough in the centre of one of the busiest and most affluent cities in the world are not just 'homeless' - they have numerous other problems that need dealing with before housing. For those outside the centre, especially in rural areas, perhaps housing is higher up the list; all I can speak about is my neighbourhood observations.
I don't think it need more funding per se, it needs more efficient and effective spending.
Yes, it does seem you do lean left. And where you lean left on one issue you must lean left on many because government intervention and the free market are mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to a woman on twitter a while back who's brother was in trouble. His wife had just died and no one in the council would offer any help with housing even though he had four kids and one of them was autistic. The entire family was being made homeless. But his sister who was telling me about it would have taken him in if she had the money no doubt. The larger community would also have done so if we were not so broken up by corporatism and multi culturalism to be completely alienated from each other. The community can do what the government never can do which is distinguish between those that have hit hard times and need the help and those that have some sort of ideological commitment against being contributing members of society. for the government who don't know individuals personally everyone is given a form to sign in that is requesting help and everyone is given to or penalised equally or in accordance with an ideological agenda.
Everytime government gets involved in anything it spreads like a sickening cancer. Schools originally were made from within a community and would train the kids for the working world of that community. Then the government got involved and indoctrinated them to give Britain huge amount of military volunteering in world war 1. Pensions were originally working class communities working together to protect each other, then the government got involved and stole money out of pensions for their various ideological agendas.
Everything government does is inefficient because it is made up of bureaucrats that like to create systems that reward lack of productivity. Here is a quote from George Orwell on that:
'It was possible no doubt to imagine a society in which wealth in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries should be evenly distributed while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves, and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority held no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a heirarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.'
We don't have a free market, it's an unachievable utopian fantasy - but we do have a government and we do actually need it to function.
DeleteThe social responsibility of the government should be to allow people the opportunities to do things for themselves. Current strategies are clearly not working - that doesn't mean we must abandon government and do nothing, because that wont work either.
There is a 3rd way.
DeleteIf the UK were still a Christian nation with a very small government (and hence very low taxation), and no welfare state at all, at a very local level Christians would provide for these people. Homes would be built, food would be provided, souls might be saved too.
The welfare state stops all of the above from happening, and cultural marxism and laws propagated by the (anti-Christian) deep state promote a destruction of the family (which would otherwise help to support vulnerable children), feminism (which also destroys family formation and marriages that last, and *equality*, meaning that true genetic altruistic Brits are replaced by other genes that are selfish and brutal.
Eventually civilisation will collapse because of these policies, but that's what they want, being nihilistic satanists of course.
May God protect His children in the century ahead.