The government has announced a new ‘Somewhere Safe to Stay’ centre for homeless support in Medway. This move will relieve some of the pressure on current homelessness provision in Medway, which is currently suffering due to government funding cuts.

The country is hurtling toward another preventable winter crisis; latest figures have shown that Medway has a much worse homelessness problem than the rest of Kent, with 1,059 total homeless. Last year, Shelter estimated 2,000 children in Kent would be homeless on Christmas Day. Medway topped that list with 619 homeless children.

Medway Labour advocates treating the causes, not just the symptoms of homelessness, in order to prevent revolving door homelessness and rough sleeping.

Cllr Naushabah Khan, Councillor for Gillingham South and Medway Labour Spokesperson for Housing said, ‘While it is good to see the government starting to take the worrying rise in rough sleeping seriously, with only one hub planned for Kent the measures do not seem to go far enough.

We need to be looking at the wider problem of homelessness, caused by a Tory government’s damaging austerity measures, a chronic lack of council housing and rising rents.

With over 600 children in Medway living in temporary accommodation, the government needs to urgently review the housing and rental sector and work with local authorities to find long term solutions to a broken market.’


If you’re at risk of homelessness:

Please visit Medway Council’s homelessness support page.

If you’re homeless or rough sleeping:

Here is a calendar showing support available for homeless in Medway

Figures quoted in this article:

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/2500-homeless-people-in-kent-2017-134864/

http://thepoliticalmedway.co.uk/dickensian-medway-hard-times-homelessness/

 

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