PM Unveils £100m Fund to Address Homelessness

Monday 13 August, 2018 Written by Simon Collyer

Theresa May has unveiled a £100m government fund in an attempt to eradicate rough-sleeping in England within the next decade.

It comes as James Brokenshire, the communities secretary, admitted that efforts to tackle homelessness had “not been good enough”, with estimates suggesting as many as 4,751 people sleeping rough on any given night in the country.

He said the government’s homelessness strategy – to be launched on Monday – will offer help to those with mental health problems and addictions, domestic abuse victims, those leaving prison, and will set about researching the scale of LGBT+ homelessness.

James Brokenshire quit the cabinet to have lung surgery. He began the year not knowing whether he had a future, let alone one in politics. In January, James Brokenshire left his cabinet post as Northern Ireland secretary after being diagnosed with lung cancer. The non-smoker had been in the job for less than 18 months when his world turned upside down.

Having recently watched his father die from pancreatic cancer, the news was a brutal wake-up call for the fitness fanatic as he was forced to face his own mortality. But today he has come a long way since the “dark times” after his diagnosis and is now heading the campaign to bring an end to homelessness.

James Brokenshire at the Home Office