Almost half of homeless families in temporary accommodation have been stuck there for more than two years and there are more than one million on council and social housing waiting lists
Fabulously enriched by inherited wealth and taxpayers, a privileged chap born to live in palaces and castles resides on another planet to the Earth inhabited by the rest of us.
The hereditary monarchy must show a little noblesse oblige to retain popular consent and I’ll cut William Windsor a bit of slack and acknowledge that he probably cares about the homeless. Just not enough in his ivory tower to throw open the spare rooms of Kensington and Buckingham Palaces, Windsor Castle, Balmoral, Sandringham, etc, etc, etc.
His much paraded Homewards initiative doesn’t even touch the sides when the latest annual survey found 3,898 people sleeping rough across England alone – an increase of 27% on the previous year, 61% higher than a decade ago and 120% up on 2010. In steel city Sheffield, visited by the Prince of Wales and one of six areas he’s operating in, latest annual figures reveal a record 4,000 people or families applied to be registered as homeless which is a jump of 500 on the previous 12 months.
So let’s be brutally honest: Prince William building 24 houses on his, again inherited, Duchy of Cornwall estate spread over 20 counties might be a relief for two dozen lucky families and fabulous PR for him but it is a drop in the ocean.
Because official data discloses another 279,400 poor souls living in temporary accommodation, most of them families, with no place to call home plus another 20,000 in hostels and what is called supported accommodation,
Almost half, 47%, of those homeless families in temporary accommodation have been stuck there for more than two years which sounds like permanent misery to me..
Then add the more than one million on council and social housing waiting lists, tenants struggling to pay private landlords rocketing rents and buyers impoverished by huge mortgage interest rate jumps (thank you Liz Truss ) and the scale of Britain’s housing crisis is enormous.
Nobody should be forced to rely upon the charity or interest, self or otherwise, of a massive landowner born to be King. A roof over your head, a place of your own to call home, is or should be a fundamental basic human right in the world’s sixth largest economy.
The housing crisis is a damning failure over 14 years of a rentier class UK Conservative Government dominated by MP landlords. Labour talks of sweeping away planning laws to build 300,000 houses a year but this emergency requires more, much more.
Until every single one of us is guaranteed an affordable decent home, rented or owned, we are all diminished. Including the cosseted toff with more bedrooms than a hotel.
