Debbie Abrahams MP Tables a Homeless Petition - Please Support

HOUSING EMERGENCY - please sign the homelessness petition and distribute widely – Prime Minister – stop making families homeless and stop individuals dying on the streets.

Low income renters are powerless & humiliated when landlords evict parents and children onto the street with their suitcases.The bailiff changes the locks of a property because the landlord defaulted on the mortgage or the tenant’s income was too low and the large increases in rents too high.

The bedroom tax and other housing benefit cuts have caused havoc, hunger, ill health & homelessness in the lives of renters – and street deaths – including 726 in 2018.

HOUSING EMERGENCY please ask you Member of Parliament to sign Early Day Motion No 55 – Homelessness. Tabled by Debbie Abrahams MP on 13th January 2020.

“That this House deplores the 77 per cent increase in the number of homeless families in temporary accommodation in England to 84,740 since 2010, including 126,020 children, with a further 82,000 children sofa surfing according to the Children’s Commissioner; is concerned that according to Crisis a further 3.74 million people would rather have a home of their own; condemns the increasing number of homeless individuals dying, including 726 in 2018 alone; recognises that a large proportion of homelessness is the result of cuts to housing benefit; notes that the increase in evictions is driven by insecure tenancies and exacerbated by court action, that temporary accommodation for some is lasting over ten years, and that the impact on the health and well-being of homeless people and their children can be very severe; and calls on the Government to support the Elimination of Homelessness Bill, urgently take steps to increase housing and council tax benefit as well as universal credit, and adequately fund local authorities to ensure that no property remains empty or unused for more than six months.“

An early day motion (EDM), in the Westminster system, is a motion, expressed as a single sentence, tabled by Members of Parliament that formally calls for debate “on an early day”. In practice, they are rarely debated in the House and their main purpose is to draw attention of MPs and Government to particular subjects – in this case the housing crisis.

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