Emergency Housing Plan

We need an Emergency Housing Plan for Bristol. I’m appalled that we have 21,000 families on the Council Housing list with no realistic chance of a home. How can we not have a safety net for families that suffer misfortune?”

A key problem is how to pay for it. The Department for levelling up, Housing and Communities has returned £1.9 bn because it can’t find housing projects to spend it on. I have written to Michael Gove asking how Bristol can apply for funding from this money. Read my letter and his reply here.(“link to new page entitled Gove letter”)

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 there were 100,000 homeless. By 1672 all of them had new homes. If they could do, it why can’t we?

I watched Cathy come Home in 1966. The TV drama shocked the nation when it showed how easily a young family could spiral into homelessness, through no fault of their own. In all these years nothing has changed. Politicians promise to build thousands of houses but never deliver.

My plan calls for prefabricated homes to be erected temporarily on any unoccupied land in Bristol. I’m not planning Council homes or luxury. Just basic accommodation so people have a base to sort out their lives while they wait for all the affordable homes to be built.

A kit for a three bedroom house costs a few thousand pounds from China. Obviously there will be costs involved in assembling them etc. When the affordable homes are built the temporary ones can be removed.

If 30,000 people in Bristol were made homeless in massive fire, it would be a national emergency. We need to treat homelessness as the emergency it is. We need to respond as Winston Churchill would with “Action this day!” Read more about how I would solve the housing crisis here.