Over 1,500 renters forced to sleep on streets after being evicted by their landlord

Another 951 people seen sleeping rough for the first time had been evicted from asylum accommodation – 17% of the total number of new rough sleepers. The Big Issue revealed last year that efforts to clear the asylum backlog had led to a sharp rise in the number of people presenting to local authorities as homeless after being granted refugee status.

For the first time in CHAIN’s 10-year history, the proportion of people seen rough sleeping who were from countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australasia was higher than the proportion of people from Europe (excluding the UK). Researchers said this was “at least partially driven by the increasing number of people arriving on the streets following departure from asylum support accommodation”.

Emma Haddad, CEO at St Mungo’s homelessness charity, urged the next government to “treat homelessness as an emergency and prioritise it in their first 100 days”.

She added: “This week we sent an open letter to party leaders with over 50,000 signatures calling for a commitment to extend funding that is critical to help rising numbers of rough sleepers. This will be a crucial first step. Homelessness is complex but it can be prevented by targeting the causes, intervening early and investing in the right approaches.”

Most of the people (6,956) were seen sleeping rough only oce. The CHAIN report states that homelessness services worked to help 4,379 people (37%) seen rough sleeping into some form of accommodation. This does not necessarily mean the other 63% are still rough sleeping, it said, as many will no longer be in contact with services and may have found their own solutions.

Khan added: “In London, I’ve quadrupled City Hall’s rough sleeping budget, investing in emergency accommodation, outreach teams and extra cold-weather support. However, it’s clear that much more is needed, starting with ending ‘no fault’ evictions and fixing the chaos in the asylum system which is seeing people moved out of Home Office accommodation and onto the streets.”

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.