When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader last year, he declared emphatically: ‘Poverty isn’t inevitable.’ He was right – it isn’t. And neither is the Dickensian blight of rapidly rising homelessness – the darkest stain left by this Tory government on the fabric of our society.
Shortly before Corbyn’s election, Labour activists launched LCEH with a simple aim: to end homelessness. Some balked at this suggestion. Some still do. But we meant it then and we mean it today. We really can end homelessness. Together.
We are not alone in believing this either. Earlier this week Jon Sparkes, the chief executive of Crisis – the country’s biggest single person charity – wrote in the Guardian about the quiet revolution under way to tackle homelessness in Wales. As ever, Wales is proving itself to be a repository of some of the finest socialist solutions. Jon was clear that he believed homelessness could be ended.
In his article, Jon argued that England should adopt the recent change in Welsh law which requires councils to help prevent people from becoming homeless. The latest figures from Wales show that this change in the law has resulted in successful council interventions in two-thirds of cases. This statistic is, quite simply, remarkable.
There are dangers with the policy Jon suggests, of course. Local government, in England especially, has been shredded to bits by the Tories and it is questionable whether poorer councils (ie Labour ones) would be able to meet such a legal requirement. Every day I spend as a Labour councillor is haunted by the reality that my power to help people is decreasing with each and every Tory cut.
Moreover, the homelessness crisis was not caused by local councils. It was caused by Tory policies at a national level. Unaffordable housing, merciless sanctions on those out of work, unfair wages, inadequate funding for mental health and cuts to local government budgets are all part of a cruel Tory legacy. It would be tempting, therefore, to refuse to carry the can for this deeply irresponsible government.
But we have to get real. After all, what matters is what works. A policy like this may not be perfect, but if the results in Wales were mirrored in the rest of the UK then the benefits would most certainly outweigh the risks. The bottom line is that this is a policy that drastically reduces homelessness. Furthermore, one of the arenas in which Labour does still have significant power is local government. At the very least, we could trust Labour authorities to do a better job of rehousing the homeless than any Whitehall Tory.
We really should listen to charities like Crisis, as well. One of the best weapons we have against the Tory machine is a sympathetic audience in the homelessness sector. One of the tactics our campaign uses is to pool the intelligence and research undertaken by charities and thinktanks such as Crisis, and to turn it into policy suggestions which we hope will make it into Labour’s next manifesto. Only by learning from as many experts as possible can we build an unanswerable case for ending homelessness.
All of this points to an inconvenient truth: you cannot do anything without power. From the beginning, our campaign has worked closely with homelessness charities such as Crisis and St Mungo’s, both of which sent speakers to our launch event. They ask us not to become too partisan. They urge us to lobby the Tory government. Yet we see a simpler solution – a Labour government.
What the Welsh example shows is the immense opportunity that power affords to change people’s lives for the better. Our outreach work provides vital relief for many rough sleepers – but it only addresses the symptoms of the crisis – not the causes.
Only with real power can we legislate to undo the damage done by this senseless government. Only with real power can we prove Corbyn was right when he said poverty was not inevitable. Only with real power can we end homelessness once and for all.
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Sam Stopp is a Labour councillor in the London borough of Brent and is the chair of the Labour Campaign to End Homelessness. He tweets @CllrStopp