It is a tragedy for society that anyone should be on the streets – Labour must lead the fight to end homelessness

Sam Stopp is a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Brent and is the Chair and founder of LCEH.

Ryan Maynes is a Labour activist and Head of Policy at LCEH.

Just over a year ago, in the midst of the previous Labour leadership election, we launched The Labour Campaign to End Homelessness. We did so with the ultimate aim of removing from our vastly rich society the Dickensian tragedy that sees thousands upon thousands of people in this country without a home and struggling to survive.

We were then, and are now, a broad coalition of Labour Party members, trade unionists, MPs and councillors, united in our anger at the way in which the homelessness crisis has exploded under this “One Nation” government. We are united, too, by a determination to be activists in the streets, and not merely to reassure ourselves of our altruism from the comfort of seminar rooms or the cloistered halls of Westminster.

Throughout this last year, we have led weekly outreach missions in London in order to provide rough sleepers with warm food, warm clothes and other much-needed provisions. After several months of walking miles across London to hand out supplies, we have now established a hot food stall on The Strand. Every week from this stall, we provide well over 100 rough sleepers with warm meals, clothes and other vital provisions.

Our outreach work is, however, a sticking plaster on a bullet wound. We do it to help people survive, to show solidarity, and to make a point. Yet it is not a solution. To truly end homelessness, we need to deal with its root causes, which are as varied as they are pernicious. So, today, we launch our manifesto to end homelessness, which can be found here. We very much hope that the Labour Party will incorporate it into its next manifesto.

Our five key policy proposals are:

1.  A government-led national structure involving all of the major organisations, including statutory and community sector organisations, dedicated to ending homelessness.
2. Create a more effective registration system and information database of rough sleepers and hidden homeless to begin the process of rehousing.
3. Implement more efficient preventative measures and early intervention programmes to stop homelessness becoming entrenched and end the cycle.
4. Enshrine the right to a home for everyone and begin the process of housing all of the UK’s homeless population, including those with complex needs.
5. Launch a substantial and sustainable programme of public and social house building.

These policy proposals are the result of a year’s worth of conversation with people experiencing homelessness, leading figures in the charity sector, leading Labour politicians and senior trade unionists. The homelessness crisis cannot be divorced from the inequality crisis, and homelessness is the tip of the iceberg when we consider how divided our society is.

At the start of our campaign, we chose to make this a campaign focussed purely on lobbying the Labour Party for two reasons: 1) We didn’t believe lobbying the Tory Government would make a sufficient difference and 2) we wanted Labour itself to embrace our radical, socialist call for a final end to homelessness. That is why last month we submitted an open letter to a newspaper calling on Labour to include, in its next manifesto, a pledge to end homelessness.

This is not an empty call. Leading charities such as Shelter and Crisis also believe that homelessness can be ended. Under the last Labour government, homelessness was cut massively, but we want the next Labour government to be the one to end homelessness once for all. One of the many challenges to our party is to re-embrace the spirit of our early radicalism, so let us rise to that challenge.

Never forget that ours is the party that built the NHS and introduced the minimum wage and civil partnerships. Now let ours be the party to end homelessness.

Labour Campaign to End Homelessness will launch its manifesto at 5pm today at the Baltic Fleet Pub in Liverpool. Speakers will include Teresa Pearce, Lillian Greenwood, Tom Copley, Martin Smith, GMB national organiser, Sam Stopp and Rebecca Wilson, national Outreach Coordinator of the campaign.