Yahoo Finance Is this converted shipping container a solution to Britain's homeless 'crisis'?
A restaurant owner has come up with an ingenious idea to help tackle one city’s homeless problem.
Jasper Thompson enlisted local tradespeople to transform a rusting old shipping container into a shelter for the homeless.
It has power, a snug living room/bedroom, small kitchen, shower room and toilet and now ‘Carl’s Haven’ has opened its doors in Bristol.
“I know a lot of people in Bristol and called in a lot of favours and tapped a lot of people up and the response in the last few months has been amazing,” said Thompson, who runs the Jamaican Diner in nearby Bedminster.
He and a number of homeless people, together with other volunteers, worked for 12 days on the project to make the container liveable.
Local tradespeople came along to install the various donated fixtures and fittings and to train the homeless men in new skills.
Housing and homelessness was catapulted to centre stage of the General Election campaign on Thursday.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn once again attacked the “rigged” system that sees tens of thousands of people priced out of the housing market – both in the rental sector and home buying market.
He attacked the government’s house building record, saying housing is treated as “an investment for the few, not homes for the many”.
He said figures show Labour councils are building on average nearly 1,000 more homes than their Tory counterparts, and that building affordable homes is at a 24-year low.
On a visit to Essex, Corbyn warned: “Britain faces a housing crisis, with runaway rents and unaffordable housing.”
According to figures from the House of Commons library, Labour councils have built on average 2,577 new homes from 2010 to this year, while Conservative councils have built 1,679.
Campaign group Shelter says that 150 families become homeless in Britain every day.
It highlights the fact that house prices become ever more unaffordable to many people, rents continue to rise, wages in real terms are stagnating and that too few affordable homes are being built.
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In a report last month, Shelter said that typical new homes built today are out of reach for eight in ten (83%) working private renting families across the country – even if they used the government’s Help to Buy scheme.
Graeme Brown, Shelter’s interim chief executive, said: “Big developers and land traders are making millions from a rigged system while families struggle with huge renting costs and have to give up on owning a home of their own, which has become nothing more than a pipe dream.”
Latest government figures show:
In the last year alone, 59,260 households were accepted as homeless by their local council – a rise of 22% over the last 5 years
The loss of a private tenancy remains the single biggest cause of homelessness, with 18,750 households becoming homeless after an eviction from a privately rented home in 2016
Since 2011, the rise in the number of households evicted from a privately rented home has accounted for 78% of the rise in homelessness
The National House Building Council released figures on Thursday showing that 42,470 new homes were registered in the first quarter of 2017, the strongest quarter since 2007, as well as a 17% increase on the same period in 2016.
Tory housing minister Gavin Barwell added: “We recently set out a clear plan to build more affordable housing – and the number of housing starts is up by three quarters since 2010.”
