Michael Meacher MP

Just when you thought that things can’t get worse, the screw is turned further.   According to the official National Housing Federation, the cuts in housing benefit which slasher Osborne announced in his Budget and which DWP are now about to launch will force over 750,000 people out of their homes, increasing 5-fold the 140,000 persons currently classified as homeless in Britain.   What is going to happen to soaring hundreds of thousands of additional rough sleepers when local authorities, facing 25-30% cuts like central Departments, only have a statutory duty to house people in ‘priority need’? (more…)