Councils force homeless out of London on rapid pace
Reports in the British media show that local authorities in London are moving homeless people out of the city on an unprecedented scale.
The Guardian newspaper said in a report on Monday that the number of homeless and rough sleepers moved out of London in the first half of this year had increased by almost 50 percent.
The report said more than 1,200 households had been forced out of the capital by local councils, an increase of 46 percent compared to the same period in 2017. It said 688 households had been sent out of London only between April and June alone, the highest number recorded over the past six years.
The homeless are sent to places far from London, including to Glasgow in Scotland and Cardiff in Wales, said the report, adding that the practice had turned the lives of many families upside down.
Councils have blamed the increase in the number of evictions to rising homelessness, tightening public finances and a lack of new cheap homes in London. They have called on Britain’s Chancellor of Exchequer Philip Hammond to stabilize their funding as the minister is to announce his annual budget later on Monday.
Britain has been grappling with a visible decline in its social care standards as more and more people are joining the country’s population of 14 million poor as a result of nearly a decade of austerity measures.
Prime minister Theresa May said earlier this month that people in Britain should know that austerity was over, vowing that her government would end a series of painful spending cuts that had been introduced in 2010 to reduce budget deficit.
However, many believe May’s signature social benefit policy, known as the Universal Credit, is mainly to blame for a historic surge in homelessness and rough-sleeping in Britain. They say many people have lost their eligibility to apply for social homes due to complications in the system.
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