When I moved to London in 1981 I was staggered at seeing people sleeping on the streets, living in cardboard boxes on street corners, sleeping in subways and on park benches.
I had moved from Kendal in Cumbria, where there were two people who slept rough, both of whom apparently refused to live in proper housing for their own reasons.
That people had to sleep rough was such a revelation to me... now almost 35 years on and there are even more people sleeping on the streets or being dumped in unsuitable temporary accommodation.
People with mental health issues, young people, homeless families, or ex service-people who have nowhere else to live and who are suffering the awful after-effects of their involvement in any of the more recent conflicts.
How can this be? Why and how have we got it so wrong as a society? How do we solve the problem? And how quickly can we solve it? We need social housing, we need affordable housing, we need a variety of housing suitable for the different needs of people. Not just family homes, but flats or houses for single people, for elderly people, for disabled people, for everyone to be able to have a place they can call their own. It should not be too much to ask in 2015 that we all have somewhere to live!
*Jeremy Corbyn's housing manifesto proposes a radical rebooting of home construction
permitting councils to be house builders and providers in order to meet
the demand for affordable housing in their own areas: PDF LINK
* The new Leader of the Labour Party, just in case you missed it!
