Mayor's plea for funding to continue homelessness progress
The West Midlands Mayor has called on the Government to extend a funding programme which has helped take dozens rough sleepers off the streets.
Housing First has helped more than 150 rough sleepers in the West Midlands into homes of their own with specialist support for mental health, drug and alcohol addiction.
Mayor Andy Street now wants the Government to commit to a further £12 million over the next four years to provide shelter for 700 more homeless people.
It comes after figures showed the number of rough sleepers had fallen by 32 per cent in the last year from 169 to 115 across the West Midlands.
The Mayor said, “After the promising initial results of Housing First and the decrease in rough sleeping we have seen, we still need to do more to make sure that no-one sleeps rough in the West Midlands.
“That’s why today I’m calling on the Government to extend the funding available for the project, committing another £12 million to the project until 2024 so that we can eliminate rough sleeping and tackle the root causes of homelessness”.
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the rough sleepers were in Birmingham which has had a huge problem with homelessness over recent years.
The Black Country total dropped from 49 to 34, with the highest number in Wolverhampton.
A total of 19 people were recorded as being homeless in the city in 2018, but that figure dropped to 14 in 2019, remaining top of the Black Country rankings.
Sandwell was ranked second highest for homelessness in 2018, with 14 rough sleepers accounted for, but this figure reduced to 10 in 2019.
In Walsall, over a 12-month period, the figure more than halved, from 11 to five.
Dudley has the lowest rough sleeping figures, dropping from five in 2018 to four in 2019.
In Birmingham the number has gone from 91 to 52.
