Where is the moral outrage?
As levels of homelessness in Britain hit new highs, few people any longer seem to care
I’ve always thought a good test of a society’s commitment to the idea of civilization is to count the number of people it allows to be homeless. On that measure Britain is steadily becoming less civilized.
I first had my eyes opened to the extent of homelessness in rich countries on a visit to the United States back in 1988. On the evening of that year’s general election, in which George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis to the Presidency in a landslide, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Los Angeles bound for San Francisco.
The first mile of that journey took us through parts of downtown LA. Struggling to see in the dark through fugged up windows, I eventually made out what appeared to be a huge quantity of discarded cardboard boxes lined up along the side walks. There were thousands of them.
It didn’t take me long to realise that far from being discarded, each of these boxes was home to a human being who had nowhere else to sleep. In one of the richest cities, in the richest country on the planet.
Back in London, nine years into Margaret Thatcher’s Prime Ministership, street homelessness was already a significant problem, but nothing on that scale. But by 2010, when Tony Blair came to power, the streets of the capital were starting to resemble those of Los Angeles, and not just via the proliferation of Starbucks and other American chains. Street homelessness had reached levels not seen since for decades, and Blair resolved to do something about it.
As David Christie wrote earlier this year:
‘Labour gave a high priority to homelessness and set itself the aim of reducing rough sleeping by two-thirds by 2001. To the surprise of many, it achieved its aim ahead of time. By 2010, at the end of Labour’s three terms in government, rough sleeping was at its lowest ever recorded levels and had almost ceased to be a visible problem.’
This success was due in no small part to Blair’s appointment of my former colleague Louise (now Baroness) Casey to run the Rough Sleepers Unit when it was established in 1999. Good leadership is always crucial but, as Christie reports, achieving such an objective is not rocket science, nor is it especially costly when set against public spending overall.
He goes on to list five features of Labour’s strategy then that were key to its success:
it is a question of political will.
it is vital to address the problem holistically.
careful consideration must be given to any government bodies that are created.
policies must be designed to ensure that those resettled do more than merely maintain their accommodation but are empowered to take control of their lives in order to escape homelessness permanently.
preventing homelessness in the first place is more important than addressing it once it has occurred.
Fast forward 14 years, and once again we have a Labour government elected on a promise to address a decade and a half of Tory neglect, one consequence of which is that homelessness now stands at record levels, worse than those that drove Blair to take action back in 1997.
And while London Mayor Sadiq Khan has a plan to reduce rough sleeping in the capital, as even he admits, things are likely to get worse before they get better. Unless it becomes a priority for the government nationally - this is not just a London problem - it is difficult to see any progress being made.
Why does the challenge of reducing homelessness feel so much harder to achieve today? Perhaps because of the effects of years of austerity, a word that pretty accurately translates as ‘government-led national economic and social self-harm’. Or perhaps there’s been a (backward) shift in our moral sensibilities?
Have people have become inured to the problem? Or have they bought the lie that with so many intractable problems to deal with, there really isn’t an affordable solution? Or the more pernicious one that anyone who ends up on the street has only themselves to blame?
This brings us back to Christie’s first point above: the question of political will. Is it really the case that fewer people today are concerned / appalled / ashamed about the level of homelessness in this country? I rather doubt it.
But I do wonder if there is any longer a connection between the moral sensibilities of the electorate and the means by which the requisite political will is generated. Would a mass letter writing campaign to MPs force the matter further up the political agenda? Or a concerted campaign in the mainstream media, however unlikely that is? Again, I doubt it.
Today, as in 1997, the problem extends far beyond street homelessness, though many of those who end up on the streets do so after falling through a social safety net that has been criminally starved of funds. So much so that a record 320,000 families are now facing homelessness in England according to recent government figures.
A walk through London’s West End today is a stark reminder of that drive through downtown LA 36 years ago. There’s not as much cardboard in evidence, Westminster City Council seemingly invests far more in recycling than it does in preventing homelessness.
But as happy, well-heeled revellers stream out of the endless upmarket bars and restaurants only to trip over people sleeping on the pavement, the obscene gap between those who have more than enough and those who have nothing is heart-wrenching to see.
Back in 1999, Louise Casey controversially suggested that the practice of giving money directly to homeless people wasn’t really helping. Nowadays, of course, few people carry cash, so plaintiff cries of ‘any spare change please’ generally fall on deaf ears.
Enterprising buskers, and even Big Issue sellers, have adapted to the cashless society by using ‘tap to pay’ card terminals connected directly to the 4G network. Technology, it seems, will help everyone except the very poorest.
Comparing 1997 to the situation today, David Christie says:
The way in which Labour went about addressing street homelessness, the mechanisms of government they employed, the bodies they set up, the way in which they both empowered and regulated the homelessness sector, the legislation they passed and the nature and scope of the funding they provided could easily be replicated to address the current crisis.
All it requires is the political will. It’s not as if the efforts of charities like Shelter, Crisis and the many organisations providing hot meals and hostel places are any less heroic than they were 30 years ago. But there isn’t the political will to do anything about it.
Tony Blair had a clear moral vision for a better society, one in which people were helped off the street and into permanent, secure accommodation. We desperately need that kind of morally-inspired political leadership again today. But there is lamentably little sign of it from the current Labour government.
Perhaps Angela Rayner will surprise us; after all, Blair’s miracle didn’t happen overnight. But as homelessness has become normalised, something we have learned to accept as part of the modern economy, I suspect she will struggle to persuade her Treasury colleagues that the relative paltry sums required would be money well spent.
We know from recent experience what can be achieved. In 2020, when Covid-19 hit, the government made it a priority to find emergency accommodation for those sleeping rough. Once again Baroness Casey was called upon to make it happen. She obliged hotel chains whose rooms were lying empty to open their doors. Like the successful furlough payments system, it worked because there was the political will to make it happen.
I don’t remember seeing any opinion polls asking how strongly respondents feel about homelessness, but I suspect if they were asked, most people would still feel at least one of concerned, appalled or ashamed.
Empathy is always the best driver of political ambition. But today’s politicians seem totally lacking in that regard, while an electorate exhausted by compassion fatigue can no longer summon up the moral outrage to force the issue higher up the political agenda.
As Louise Casey said soon after her appointment in 1999,
‘It is morally reprehensible of any country like ours, to leave those people there for another minute, another hour, another month or another year.’
But we will.
Thank you for writing about the issue of homelessness. It is a moral outrage, an indictment of us and our systems of government.