Recently in Homelessness Category

The London Borough of Wandsworth is home to the subway (pictured) in A Clockwork Orange where a homeless man was beaten up by the droogs. Forty years later, the council appears to be threatening to deliver a good kicking - metaphorically - to its housing tenants. 

First, it warned that entire families could be evicted from its properties if just a single member of the household was convicted of involvement in last summer's riots - with an arrogant disregard of the deleterious effects of homelessness on the very young.

Now Wandsworth is turning its guns on unemployed people.

Going even further than work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith's draconian plan to cut the housing benefit of tenants who have failed to accrue enough working hours for entitlement (under the government's subjective measure), the south London council has warned that unemployed people could lose their homes if they remain jobless two years after moving in.

Wandsworth Council is expected this week to approve the changes to the conditions of housing tenure, under which fixed-term tenancies will be introduced to facilitate the eviction process.

In times of rising unemployment and seemingly perpetual economic crisis, it falls upon Wandsworth to finally turn the screw on those on low incomes and at risk of vulnerability.

What William Beveridge (left), with his emphasis on access to decent housing, would have made of this, one can only imagine. Actually, you could have a darned good guess.

Pictures: Rex Features

A council this week ignored an 8,000-strong petition, a Facebook page, a Twitter campaign and some strong YouTube productions by nonchalantly pulling its funding for a 38-bed Supported Living facility for homeless men.

But if Labour-run Salford Council believes its decision is final, it's not a thought shared by Positive Lifestyles, the voluntary organisation that runs Lancaster House.

In short, the campaign goes on. 

Positive Lifestyles is promising to take its case for continued funding as far as the High Court if necessary.

Writing on the campaign's webpage, David Allum, chairman of Lancaster House Peer Group, says: "I for one will use every last breath I have, every ace up my sleeve, every tool at my disposal to see this decision and the people that made it are held to account."

Incredibly, Salford Council believes that, by hastening the closure of Lancaster House - and others in the city, incidentally - it is improving its support for homeless people.

Don't believe me? Here's its own press release, boasting of a flagship homelessness project it plans to fund in collaboration with the Salvation Army. 

What it doesn't say is that it will have space for just 20 people. Put into context, there are 38 places at Lancaster House alone: in total 76 are being lost in Salford more widely.

The sums do not add up. The campaign goes on. 

The campaign to save the Supporting People centre featured in last week's blog about homelessness has stepped up a gear with the launch of another video.

Salford Council has signalled it is to cut funding to Lancaster House, a project that helps homeless single men kick-start their lives and run by charity Positive Lifestyles.

Without the scheme, the 38 service users would find themselves without a roof over their heads and prospects for changing their lives much diminished.

The latest video on You Tube (below) is a TV news-style production featuring staff and local people who want to save Lancaster House.

The campaign is also running on Facebook and Twitter and this week a petition, which can be signed online, passed 8,000 signatures.

If this facility closes, not only will it turn on to the streets up to 38 men but it will threaten the very ethos of Supporting People.

The campaign continues ahead of the council meeting on 1 August, which is due to confirm the closure of Lancaster House.

One of the most obdurate memories of the Thatcher years was the seemingly perpetual rise in homelessness, particularly among teenagers, many of whom became casualties of a ruthless change in the benefits system.

They arrived in London from other parts of the country to find the streets paved not with gold but with - literally - their fellow travellers. They remained on the streets because the hostels and refuges where they could otherwise have sheltered were either full or unsafe. 

Nearly a quarter of a century later, rough sleeping is on the increase again. The charity Broadway reports an 8% rise in the past year in the number of rough sleepers on the capital's streets, for example.

And some projects that try to reinvigorate the lives of homeless people - the voluntary groups that are David Cameron's epitome of the Big Society - are struggling.

One of these is the Salford-run Positive Lifestyles, a non-profit making charity. But its Supported Living centre for single men, Lancaster House, is under threat because of budget cuts by the Labour-run council.

Although the council insists no firm decision has been made, the charity is taking no chances and has launched a Save Lancaster House campaign on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (below).

The message is simple: shut Lancaster House and 38 people will be homeless.

What then? Thirty-eight more cases for Salford's adults' services? Or will the 38 just drift, 1980s-style, on to the streets to embark upon a life of anonymity?

Picture: Rex Features

Westminster Council's determination to drive out the charities that provide a meal to the city's rough sleepers has taken a bit of a twist.

The council, which was planning to introduce a bye-law under which soup-run charities would be prosecuted, now wants to meet "interested parties" to try to reach a solution.

It follows a consultation that brought 500 responses, according to Inside Housing.

Although Westminster is still opposed in principle to the soup runs, Daniel Astaire, the council cabinet member for society (yes, I had to read that twice), said: "Some interesting ideas have been put forward as an alternative to the proposed bye-law."

Surely Westminster isn't going soft. Mind you, a definition of "interesting" would help.

We know it is wrong, even undignified, that some people have no option other than to depend on soup runs in order to survive. On that, there can be little disagreement with Tory-run Westminster Council.

But its plan to ban a charity-run soup kitchen on council land outside Westminster Cathedral (pictured) has more than a whiff of spite and nastiness. 

Oddly, the council's move is supported by some other homelessness charities, including Thames Reach and St Mungo's, although not the Coombe Trust, which provides the sustenance. 

Surprising is Thames Reach's reaction, which last year highlighted the shocking desperation of the rough sleepers who resorted to eating rats. It says street handouts do little to help in the long-term.

Westminster maintains that the soup runs "attract" homeless people to the borough, as if they were economic migrants. What will Westminster claim next? That there is selfish and excessive demand for gluten-free minestrone?

The basic human rights laid down by Unesco are food, clothing and shelter; the Coombe Trust aims to help fulfil the first of those. If Westminster, with the help of homelessness charities, fulfilled the third, the demand for the soup runs would reduce naturally.

Currently, the Coombe Trust is performing a duty which, one must assume, is very much in keeping with the ambitions of David Cameron's Big Society vision - a voluntary organisation doing the work that local authorities cannot be bothered or cannot afford to do.

But Westminster, which is attempting to give the impression of being cruel to be kind when it is just being cruel, is doing its best to kill the Big Society a mile from 10 Downing Street.

It's being strangled at birth on your doorstep, Dave, and even the Daily Mail is appalled. It must be bad.

Picture: Glenn Copus/Evening Standard/Rex Features

There was never likely to be many banks in the Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to work for, although former bosses benefiting from multi-million pound pension largesse may affect surprise at this.

Tomorrow could prove pivotal for British charities that have invested in high-interest bank accounts in Iceland.

An old practice of dealing inhumanely with rough sleepers is creeping back on to our streets.