Jeremy Corbyn has announced plans for a future Labour government to purchase 8,000 properties to tackle the homelessness crisis immediately on taking office.
In an interview on The Andrew Marr Show, the Labour leader outlined the policy that doubles the manifesto pledge, to buy 4,000 properties, from last year’s General Election. It comes as Labour announced plans to “put an end to this national scandal” and end rough sleeping.
The new policy comes in response to the news that rough sleeping has reached record levels. Official government statistics state that 4,751 people are sleeping rough on a typical night in England – a 169 per cent increase since 2010, which Corbyn slammed as “disgraceful”.
Hang on, let’s look at the priorities here
Corbyn said: “We would immediately purchase 8,000 properties across the country to give immediate housing to those people that are currently homeless.
“At the same time we would require local authorities to build far more.”
The Labour Party said that the new homes would be a mix of “‘move-on’ housing for people leaving homelessness hostels” and would also see the introduction of housing first’ policies – whereby “rough sleepers with complex needs are moved into permanent accommodation quickly to give them a fresh start.”