By InYourArea Community

PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Bould/Stoke Sentinel

Every Tuesday the Cambridge News asks local party representatives their views on local matters.

This week they tackled the following question:

What more can be done to support the homeless in Cambridge?

When the lockdown started City Council workers sprang into action to find places for 104 people who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

That shows what can be done when there is a will and a clear vision.

As in so many other areas the pandemic has broadened our horizons of what is possible and taught us to think radically.

Sadly over recent decades we have become all too used to seeing homeless people on the streets of our towns and cities.

We come to think of homelessness as an inevitable fact of life, when it is a product of the unjust and unequal economic system we have fashioned for ourselves. With will and determination we can end homelessness. We know that now.

Back in 2012, a government study estimated that each homeless person costs the public purse 30,000 per year in the costs of healthcare, benefits, police time and local authority resources and that is before the personal costs to the people who are homeless are factored in. That indicates how much is theoretically available to address the need.

Green Party policy is to jettison a treatment first policy in favour of a housing first policy i.e. to spend money on finding places for homeless people to live and then addressing their other needs. Now that the Council has experience of imaginative initiatives to find space for homeless people, Greens would urge them to make greater use of the powers they already have to take over unused property, such as Empty Dwelling Management Orders.

A root cause of the problem is the runaway cost of housing in Cambridge. Greens advocate a land value tax to take the heat out of the property market and to discourage speculation.

Rising levels of homelessness in Cambridge represent a failure of national and local policy on housing, health and social care.

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a rallying call, providing us with a unique opportunity to make a real difference to this issue: as a result of the pandemic, around 15,000 rough sleepers have been provided with emergency accommodation nationally, of which 140 are in Cambridge.

This represents only a small proportion of the true homeless population, many of whom are living with friends or in other temporary or insecure accommodation.

The Council should make a commitment that no one accommodated as part of this emergency response should have to return to sleeping rough and guarantee that nobody will be evicted from emergency housing without an alternative.

We need to provide sufficient accommodation for a range of housing options, so that they can be tailored to individual needs.

This will include social housing for those on the housing needs register who are at risk of becoming homeless, as well as safe accommodation for women, supported housing for those moving on from hostels and a dedicated Housing First scheme to help the most entrenched rough sleepers.

Beyond bricks and mortar, our approach must be holistic and integrated with healthcare services many people struggling with homelessness have complex issues related to addiction and mental health which make holding down tenancies difficult, even when available.

We need to improve on the current fragmented approach and provide co-ordinated support that accompanies individuals on their journey from the streets to accommodation until it is sustainable.

Finally, we need the whole community to play its role in helping to end homelessness Oxford has a well-established rough sleeping charter which aims to bring citizens, businesses and charities together with the shared goal of ending rough sleeping: it is high time Cambridge had one too.

I am proud of the role played by Cambridge City Council during the coronavirus health emergency, together with the wonderful community sector, to shield rough sleepers in our city.

We found safe accommodation for more than 140 people who were sleeping rough or at risk of homelessness.

One silver lining of this is that we now have an opportunity to turn around as many lives as we can for the better.

Many who sought shelter were previously resistant to existing support on offer by the council and street outreach agencies.

We have conducted interviews with those in temporary accommodation to discuss what support they need to sustain a longer-term housing placement.

Without support to overcome mental health and addiction issues, there is a risk they will end up back on the street.

We have already found 35 rough sleepers longer-term housing placements, and currently in the process of sourcing more homes for those remaining. We hope to complete this work by October.

When considering the future, we need to see a more determined approach by central government in tackling homelessness.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat governments since 2010 have allowed rough sleeping to rise in the UK by 140 per cent, a sad outcome of a decade of austerity.

Austerity must end, with urgent investment required to underpin a strategy that fully grapples with the causes and effects of homelessness.

That means more affordable homes with greater freedoms and incentives for councils to build their own council housing. Rent controls must be enacted in the private rental sector, together with more rights for tenants.

We also need better and sustainable long-term funding for councils so our existing homelessness work can be improved and enhanced, linked to a stronger commitment to support vital street outreach, mental health and rehabilitation services.

In 2005 a local author, Alexander Masters, working at the time in a Cambridge hostel for the homeless, wrote a prize-winning account, told backwards, of his remarkable friendship with Stuart Shorter, a longtime homeless person.

Stuarts life story, told backwards, started with his death on the July 6, 2002 when he was hit by a train on the London to Kings Lynn railway line, back to his childhood, which had begun happily enough but due to a series of misfortunes in later life led him into petty crime and homelessness.

Alexander had intended that readers of his book should empathise with Stuart and how his life had unravelled, but my focus was always on the extraordinary friendship between them.

The basis of that friendship was a non-judgmental mutual acceptance but Alexander was also able to offer practical support during bad times and to help Stuart negotiate a pretty merciless society.

I had a similar experience when I served as a board member of Wintercomfort many years ago. A small group of clients and I would make regular visits to local bird sanctuaries, take woodland walks or play soccer on Midsummer Common and as a result we became pretty close friends, though nowhere near to the same degree as that between Alexander and Stuart.

What these anecdotes lead up to is that in answer to what more could be done to support the homeless I suggest that the council and local charities might consider setting up a scheme of volunteer buddies so that homeless individuals always have a friend to whom they can turn to for advice and support

Buddies would, of course, need to be trained and their suitability assessed but essentially they would become heirs of that special friendship between Alexander and Stuart which may have ended with Stuarts tragic death but which for much of his adult life was his mainstay.

Do you have a question you would like to see answered in the Cambridge News?

Post a general message in your InYourArea live feed here using the hashtag #TalkingPointTuesday and we will pass it on to the local community news team.

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TALKING POINT TUESDAY: Party representatives give their views on homelessness in the city - In Your Area