London homelessness: The capital at the centre of national crisis

Charity Crisis says real figures are worse than raw data suggests.

Transcript

00:00homeless charity crisis have claimed the number of homeless people in england is higher than

00:09official government data suggests and that a figure is edging closer towards 300 000 people

00:17now official data is based on people declaring themselves as homeless to a local authority

00:25which charity crisis says often does not happen now the government says it is investing one billion

00:33pounds in homelessness um services in 2025 to 26 a 316 million pound increase from the previous year

00:42the charity says the number of people facing the worst forms of homelessness has grown by a fifth

00:48now according to recent data last year it showed that westminster had the largest problem when it

00:56came to homelessness now westminster is a place where decisions are made for the entire country

01:04and it's also one of the world's areas in london and if not the uk as well so how does that contrast

01:13make londoners feel i don't know if i can say i've seen an increase but i will be honest there is

01:20quite a lot of homelessness in this area and i think relating to your second question about it

01:25being in westminster it's it's almost ironic that there's such a stark contrast with this part of

01:31london being one of the richest parts with sort of central governments and you've got the council as

01:37well but then you just have all this homelessness so it's it's quite it's quite an ironic contrast

01:43if that's even the right phrase because that's not really a good phrase to use yeah i have noticed

01:48i have noticed i have noticed homelessness but not an awful lot i i think the state san francisco and

01:55some cities new york have much more homeless up that are obvious than than than i have seen in london

02:02well it could be because of the river there's some it gives them maybe some a better view of life

02:09the water flows and and they flow float along you know um i don't know i think sometimes people are

02:16indifferent to the people to the homeless and i mean we have you have a party uh that should be

02:24sensitive to all mankind and womankind and certainly homeless that if they pass over if they walk over

02:31the bodies every day they're conscious of it or else they ignore them

02:35but at the same time the fact that it's here in an area um that is a so popular for tourism and b

02:45so wealthy in itself it almost brings that bleakness of having so much home so many homeless

02:51people around here to to light and i think it's a lot needs to be done to tackle that