The Simon Community

Simon News: PRESS RELEASE: Numbers of people sleeping rough in London rises again

Numbers of people sleeping rough in London rises again

The count was undertaken by more than 40 Simon Community volunteers, including present and former rough sleepers, who carried out the extensive 3-5 hour search in the streets of Camden, Islington, Tower Hamlets, City of London, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Southwark and Lambeth. The Simon Community carries out headcounts twice a year to help it to plan its outreach support programmes for those sleeping on the streets. It also enables the charity to act as an independent monitor of the figures presented by local authorities.

The Simon Community is one of the oldest homelessness charities and has been operating for 44 years. It remains entirely free of government or local authority funding, so as to offer an independent voice for the homeless and rootless on all aspects of government policy relating to homelessness and social exclusion.

Tim Nicholls, Director of the Simon Community said, “Whilst the government has achieved much in reducing the numbers sleeping rough from the particularly high figures of the mid 1990s, we are saddened to see that there are still so many people sleeping out on London’s streets, including a high proportion from the new accession countries of Eastern Europe. We have been calling for a regional strategy for a number of years and are pleased that the Mayor of London has created a London Housing Strategy. We urge him to place issues of rough sleeping, homelessness and appropriate support for those who are socially excluded at the heart of this strategy. The Simon Community hopes that this will lead to a more co-ordinated regional approach and be better than the piecemeal and parochial attitudes adopted, in recent years, by some local authorities, so that the hard to reach homeless can finally be fully supported to re-integrate and rebuild their lives.”

The Simon Community’s detailed headcount figures are as follows:

Westminster. 196 people; Camden 29 people; Kensington and Chelsea 7 people; Lambeth 16 people; Southwark 11 people; City of London 29 people; Islington 10 people; Tower Hamlets 3 people

NOTES TO THE EDITOR.

1. In November 2006, the Simon Community counted 332 people sleeping rough. In April (?) 2006, the Simon Community counted 276 people. Historically there are often higher numbers sleeping rough in the city at the beginning of the winter as the agricultural season ends.

2. On the same night that the Simon Community carried out its headcount it phoned round 66 hostels in central London to discover the number of vacant emergency bed spaces. Of the 3072 beds in these 66 hostels, 42 bed spaces were free that night.