Friday, July 22, 2016

"London is the world’s greatest city; we cannot sit back and do nothing about the rough sleeping crisis."


The text below was adapted from an article published in The Guardian, dated Sunday 17 July 2016 (click HERE), written by Sadiq Khan.

Close partnership and innovative approaches are needed to curb the rising numbers of homeless people inherited from the Conservative administration of London. I am committed to tackling London’s housing crisis in whatever form it takes – and the rise in rough sleeping over recent years is a growing source of shame that we have a moral imperative to stop.

People end up on the street for many different reasons – leaving care or hospital, problems with debt, unemployment, mental health, family breakup – and so the help they need is varied too. We can support some rough sleepers, particularly when they have become homeless recently, through programmes such as No Second Night Out.

In more entrenched (i.e. long-term) cases regarding homeless people, a more intensive intervention may be needed, as a one-size-fits-all (i.e. one solution to all problems) approach does not always work. We can promote innovative approaches by making our funding of agencies that help homeless people conditional on these agencies achieving results – an approach that has proved successful in helping people access and remain in stable accommodation.

But, crucially, we need not only to help rough sleepers on the street, but also to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place – and that’s why I’ll be launching a No Nights Sleeping Rough taskforce with prevention central to its approach. This taskforce will bring together all the agencies to tackle rough sleeping as we will only make a difference through close partnership. The taskforce will set the strategic priorities for services the mayor provides, come up with proposals for new initiatives and projects, and lobby government for the changes we need.

A Labour mayor and government dramatically reduced rough sleeping at the start of this century and I’m determined we’ll do it again. Making a difference won’t be easy, but I will lead the way.

To do:

1) Listen to the teacher read and comment the article, noting pronunciation, vocabulary and expressions, and summarising the main points of the article.

2) Read the following information on The Guardian:
The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821. It is edited by Katharine Viner. It is part of an international media group which includes The Observer (a British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly (an international roundup of articles from various papers). In 2013, The Guardian's print edition had an average daily circulation of 189,000 copies, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times, and ahead of The Independent. The newspaper's online edition was the fifth most widely read in the world as of October 2014, with over 42.6 million readers.  In the UK, its combined print and online editions reach 9 million readers. The Guardian was named newspaper of the year at the 2014 British Press Awards for its reporting on government surveillance.

3) Answer the following question:
What type of people read The Guardian do you think?

4) Translate the title.

5) Read the following information about Sadiq Khan:
Sadiq Aman Khan (born 1970) has been Mayor of London since May 2016, succeeding Conservative Party Mayor Boris Johnson. Khan was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 to 2016. He is a member of the Labour Party. His election as Mayor of London made him the city's first ethnic minority mayor, and the first Muslim to become mayor of a major Western capital. As mayor he has limited charges on London's public transport and focused on uniting the city's varied communities. He was an active supporter of the unsuccessful Britain Stronger in Europe campaign to retain the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union.

6) Question:
Why does Khan describe London as “the world’s greatest city”?

7) Read the following information about the Labour Party:
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Growing out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century, the Labour Party encompasses a diversity of ideological trends from strongly socialist to moderately social democratic (social democracy includes the belief in collective responsibility for social welfare). Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and from 1929 to 1931. Labour later served in the wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan. The Labour Party was last in government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Having won 232 seats (out of 650) in the 2015 general election, the party is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. In September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party.

8) Question:
Why does Khan want to solve the problem of rough sleeping?

9) Read the following information about sleeping rough in London:
According to the CHAIN (Combined Homelessness and Information Network) database, 8,096 people slept rough at some point in London during 2015/16, an increase of 7 per cent compared to 2014/15 (though these figures are probably an underestimate). 57 per cent are aged between 26 and 45 years with 1 in 10 under 25 and 11 per cent over 55. 43% have problems due to alcohol, 31% have problems due to drugs, and 46% have mental health problems. 32% had served time in prison. 41% are UK nationals, 37% are from Central and Eastern European countries, 2% are refugees from Eritrea and Somalia. About 15% of rough sleepers in London are women (many have been physically attacked, verbally abused and sexually assaulted). Reasons men end up on the streets include: relationship breakdown, substance misuse, and leaving an institution (prison, care, hospital, etc.). Reasons women end up on the streets include physical or mental health problems and escaping a violent relationship. Social causes include: high levels of poverty, unemployment, the inadequate benefits system, lack of affordable housing and poor management of social (council) housing. Emergency accommodation includes: cold weather or winter shelters, night shelters, emergency hostels, nightstop schemes for young homeless people aged 16 to 25, women's refuges for women fleeing domestic violence.

10) Questions:
> What do you think the consequences of sleeping rough are on individuals?
> What do you think the consequences for London are of having people sleeping rough?
> Is there a problem of people living on the streets in the area you live?
> What solutions to solving the problem of homelessness can you come up with?

Further research:
Article from The Mirror: There are 10 empty homes for every homeless family in England