Croydon’s ‘housing crisis’: New project launches to tackle rough sleeping in south London

A new project in south London is aiming to reduce homelessness by taking a new approach to the ‘housing crisis in the borough’.

Housing First is aiming to reduce homelessness in Croydon by providing homes as a starting point rather than end goal to support, and recruiting people who live and work in the area to go out and help rough sleepers.

London Live followed a group of volunteers while they searched south London hotspots for people sleeping rough at night to help.

Lee Buss, director of operations at Evolve Housing, told London Live: “The traditional model of supported housing is very linear and it works on the assumption that someone is ready to engage in support at the same time that they’re in housing need, and those two things don’t always coincide.

“Also, access to the accommodation is conditional on someone being able to accept support, and for some people, they’re not able to engage on that point, which then results in them becoming homeless again.

Volunteers work late into the night to support people sleeping rough 
London Live

“Housing First, [to] put it simply, works on the principle that to end chronic rough sleeping, you provide a home.

“The support is not conditional on accessing the accommodation.”

Labour Councillor for Croydon, Alison Butler, said: “We have a housing crisis in the borough and that covers all sorts of people, like families, older people, people with disabilities, but as a consequence of that we’ve also got rising street homelessness.

“In a modern, European city, that’s something that’s really not acceptable and we’ve really got to find ways of addressing it.”

David Ford, who previously slept rough in Croydon, told London Live: “It’s a community thing but part of that community are those who are rough sleeping and are homeless.

“So when it comes to finding solutions, them being part of the solutions and that decision-making process will then empower them.

“It’s really important that everyone in the community is involved.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in