A NEW £2.3million 24-hour homelessness centre will help eradicate rough sleeping from Southend in just four years, says a charity.
Harp hopes its new 18-bedroom night shelter and day centre, which has opened its doors after a decade of work, will help clear Southend’s streets of homeless people by 2018.
The number of empty homes in England fell by the biggest ever annual drop in 2013 to 635,127, research has found.
According to today’s figures compiled by campaigning charity Empty Homes, the amount of empty homes in England decreased by 75,000 to 635,127 in 2013 – the lowest level ever recorded.
Housing Minister Kris Hopkins has welcomed an overall country-wide drop in homelessness figures, despite a rise in London.
The latest statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that 12,890 applicants were accepted as homeless between 1 October and December 31 in England last year - a 5% drop on the same quarter in 2012.
A scheme which helps single homeless people into homes in the private rented sector is to be extended by two years, housing minister Kris Hopkins has announced.
Since its launch in 2010, the Crisis Private Rented Sector Access Development Programme has helped nearly 8,000 vulnerable people into homes.
The bedroom tax is helping to reduce child deprivation, ministers have claimed.
A new draft child poverty strategy for 2014 to 2017, which was launched by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith and education minister David Laws yesterday, lists the ‘removal of the spare room subsidy’ as one of the measures that is helping to improve the living standards of low-income families.
A Labour MP's bill calling for the bedroom tax to be scrapped will get a second reading after successfully passing its first hurdle.
Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery (pictured) yesterday introduced a 10-minute bill on scrapping the controversial under-occupation penalty, which was backed by 226 votes to one.
The coalition’s policies aimed at cutting the social security bill have so far fallen disproportionately on the youth demographic (and disabled people), despite older people receiving 47 per cent of UK welfare spending through state pensions.
Scrapping housing benefit for under-25s is one key policy announced at the Conservative party conference last year. The Conservatives seem determined to cut the benefits bill for the 1.1 million young people aged 16-24 who are out of work, despite the lack of jobs for them to go into.
Over a quarter of parents blame poor housing as a major factor for life in the UK becoming harder, a poll has revealed.
With 56% of families believing that life is harder today than it was 20 years ago, one in four told the survey that their neighbourhoods are not good places for their children to grow up in.
More than half a billion pounds has been spent by London's boroughs on emergency housing since the general election, new figures have revealed.
Local authorities have spent more than £630 million since 2010 on placing people in temporary accommodation, such as hotels and B&Bs, after they presented themselves as being homeless.
Homelessness is sadly becoming a reality for increasing numbers of young people, and plans floated yet again by the prime minister and chancellor this week to abolish housing benefit for under-25s will only make things worse.
There is nothing unusual about someone in their early 20s living with mum and dad in 21st-century Britain. Indeed, in laying out his plans to abolish housing benefit for under-25s, chancellor George Osborne said: "There are plenty of people listening to this programme who can't afford to move out of their home, but there are people on benefits who can get housing benefit under the age of 25."