don't read the menu options and go directly to the page content 
Click to view menu Click to search

Homeless at Christmas

Home / News & Views / Speeches / Homeless at Christmas

05 January 2018

Christmas Speech

Siobhain was simply astonished to hear the Prime Minister seem to justify the homelessness crisis faced by this country by remarking that those children who were homeless on Christmas Day were not rough sleepers. Maybe not, but these children did wake up on Christmas morning in B&Bs, in hostels, or in the heart of a working industrial estate.

128,000 children are homeless. Father Christmas may not even have been able to find many of them as 28% of homeless families are moved out of their home borough into temporary accommodation, often without the receiving local authority even being made aware of their arrival.

These figures do not even account for the 9,000 rough sleepers on our streets.

This is a national housing crisis. The last time that the Government target of 300,000 new homes in one year in England was achieved was almost half a century ago.

That's why Siobhain is calling upon the Government to grant Local Authorities the Right To Build and the Right To Buy so that housing can be let to families on low incomes at social housing rents.

Father Christmas is simply not in a position to influence the budgets of local authorities. But this Government is. And on behalf of the 128,000 homeless children across the country, Siobhain sincerely hopes that this will be their last Christmas morning without a place to call home.



back