Homelessness
‘It’s hell on earth for me’: how did Joe Black overdose in a homeless hostel with zero tolerance for drugs?
March 6, 2025Jude Black was delighted when her son, Joe, moved into Holmes Road Studios in Camden, north London. This wasn’t any old homelessness hostel. It had just won an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and it looked gorgeous. The 59 refurbished studio flats had en suite bathrooms and were designed around a […]
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Ruth Wyner obituary
February 2, 2025In 1998, at the peak of Ruth Wyner’s career as a manager of bold and innovative projects to help homeless people, a crowd of police officers clattered up the narrow stairs of the Wintercomfort day centre in Cambridge, squeezed into Ruth’s attic office and announced that they had arrested eight of her “clients” for dealing […]
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Map shows areas in England where the most children are homeless this Christmas
December 20, 2024At least 99,000 school children are homeless in temporary accommodation before Christmas in England, startling figures show. Ministry of Housing data obtained by charity Shelter found that at least one in 24 primary school children in London are living in temporary accommodation. In Birmingham, there are 7,394 school children aged between 5 and 17 who […]
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Michelin-starred chef opens London restaurant staffed by homeless people
September 20, 2024At first glance, the restaurant seems like any other on the quaint street in north London’s Primrose Hill: staff are busy preparing for a fully booked night, tables are laid and menus organised. What is different at this newly opened restaurant is that it has a Michelin-starred chef and is staffed almost entirely by people […]
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Inside London’s secret slums taken over by squatters
July 2, 2024‘Tom’ has lived in various squats for ten years. Homeless since he was 17, he hasn’t known a permanent safe place to call home at any point in his adult life. Now 28, Tom’s lost count of the different types of property he’s lived in, but, so far, he has managed to find somewhere to […]
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‘My state pension was £880 – and my rent was £1,000’: how a 70-year-old man became homeless in Britain
June 18, 2024In a way, 70-year-old Tony Sinclair was lucky to be in his tent on the day last year when the police arrived. The canvas that kept him from the elements ended up in the bin, but, unlike several of his neighbours, he was able to save his most important possessions from going the same way. […]
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Councils move hundreds of homeless families out of London with 24-hour ultimatums
June 10, 2024Hundreds of homeless families were permanently forced out of London by councils last year after many were given 24-hour ultimatums to either accept a private tenancy far away from the capital or be kicked out of temporary accommodation and left on the streets. The campaign group Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) found that 319 […]
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Thousands of UK renters face homelessness every month when landlords do this
May 17, 2024You sit down to enjoy your dinner and some telly as you find out the owner of your home needs you to leave, forcing you to brave the awful renting market again. Campaign groups are warning that the leading cause of homelessness – which is affecting more than 2,000 households in England each month – […]
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Sadiq Khan pledges to eliminate rough sleeping in London ‘once and for all’
April 14, 2024Sadiq Khan has pledged to eliminate rough sleeping in London, where the numbers on the streets have reached the highest level in a decade. If elected to a historic third term as mayor of London, Khan plans to spend an extra £10m on what has been described as a growing humanitarian crisis in the city. […]
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Met Police forced to say sorry to homeless man whose tent was binned
January 17, 2024The Metropolitan Police has apologised to a homeless man after his mattress, tent and toiletries, were destroyed more than two months ago. Anthony Sinclair was illegally arrested for refusing to abandon his tent – in which he was sleeping near a hospital in central London – after police issued a dispersal order. Footage showed police […]
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