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
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