It is close to midnight as two outreach workers from Spear, a homelessness charity in south London, shine their torches around bushes on the edge of a park in Twickenham.<\/p>\n
Suddenly they alight on an array of sleeping bags, airbeds, toilet rolls and plastic bags stuffed with belongings \u2013 a rough sleeping encampment that has popped up in the last two days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing numbers going up which is really not what we want,\u201d said Peter Bancroft, the operations manager at the charity. \u201cAnd it is everyone from individuals with complex mental health and substance use issues, to people who have either had a relationship breakdown or lost their job and fallen behind with their rental payments.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a bold first pledge in his first speech as prime minister, Andy Burnham promised to eradicate rough sleeping<\/a> in England, allocating an extra \u00a3340m of funding.<\/p>\n The move was welcomed by homelessness charities, but with some scepticism: Boris Johnson said<\/a> he would end rough sleeping when he was prime minister, and Keir Starmer vowed<\/a> to halve long-term rough sleeping during his time in office.<\/p>\n Yet rough sleeping numbers have risen to 4,793, the highest on record.<\/p>\n A makeshift shelter in Tooting, south London. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n On their shift, Spear outreach workers are following up nine referrals for new rough sleepers who have been spotted throughout Wandsworth and Richmond in the past 48 hours, as well as checking on the people they already know and speaking to others they spot on the way.<\/p>\n Their journey takes them into graveyards, parks, front gardens, shop doorways and car parks, where people have been spotted sleeping in tents, in cars and on the ground. Some people are happy to chat to the workers \u2013 they accept water, the offer of a mobile phone and a housing assessment \u2013 but others turn down all offers of help.<\/p>\n Two people with drug addiction issues sleeping in a haphazard tent in the corner of a graveyard had emergency council accommodation until two weeks ago, but they didn\u2019t use it and it was revoked.<\/p>\n Bancroft said: \u201cI would love to be able to say homelessness services can deal with this, but I\u2019ve been playing the game a long time now and I know the best results have been in partnership with other services.<\/p>\n A rough sleeping site in Twickenham, west London. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to get drug and alcohol services, mental health services, social services, all onboard, everybody working collaboratively to wrap around the person or it just falls apart. Ultimately, my dream is to be out of a job because that would mean we\u2019ve solved it, but it\u2019s not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n The details on Burnham\u2019s rough sleeping plans are still unclear but it is likely he will build on the success of his A Bed Every Night scheme<\/a> in Manchester, which departed from the norm by allowing all rough sleepers to access support \u2013 even those without local connections or recourse to public funds.<\/p>\n It also provided individuals with case workers to deal with multiple issues, not just housing, and it ran alongside a Housing<\/a> First pilot scheme targeted at the most complex rough sleeping cases, which guided more than 300 people into long-term tenancies.<\/p>\n There is a growing consensus that funnelling lots of vulnerable rough sleepers, many with complex needs, illnesses and addictions, into communal living spaces such as hostels and houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) often pushes people back into homelessness.<\/p>\n Ray, who experienced homelessness after sudden sight loss. Photograph: Grey Hutton<\/p>\n Social housing is still being built at a painfully slow rate in England \u2013 Burnham has pledged the \u201cbiggest council housebuilding programme<\/a> since the postwar period\u201d, but his housing minister, Angela Rayner, has since acknowledged the country is still very far off this building pace.<\/p>\n Francesca Albanese, the executive director of policy and social change at Crisis, said: \u201cFor a long time in England<\/a> we\u2019ve just been maintaining the status quo, so putting lots of money into hostels, emergency and temporary accommodation \u2013 managing homelessness not ending it.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we need is to get people off the streets into permanent homes, not into temporary accommodation. Housing First is the most evidence-led intervention we know that works to end rough sleeping so we need to see that rolled out nationally. We know about Andy\u2019s track record and there\u2019s real optimism this can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Ray, 53, spent four years drifting between sofa surfing, street homelessness and temporary accommodation that was \u201cbarely nicer than a prison cell\u201d in Liverpool after experiencing sudden sight loss. It was only when he was given support from Crisis and finally offered a social home that he was able to turn his life around.<\/p>\n