On Thursday 20th October, coordinated by Homeless Link, 32 homelessness organisations from across England wrote to the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
The letter, which was featured in I News, calls on Hunt to implement a rise, in line with inflation, for homelessness financial support in the coming ‘Medium-Term Fiscal Statement’ on October 31st to help services deal with rising costs.
The charities argue that “when significant cuts to public spending are made, homelessness and rough sleeping increase.” They cite the 168% increase in rough sleeping that resulted from the last round of austerity in 2010 and argue that without an uplift in funding “services will be operating under a real terms cut at a time of sharply rising demand, with many people bound to fall through the widening cracks as a result.”