A CHARITY has highlighted how public sector workers – including teachers, 999 workers and NHS staff – are being left on the brink of homelessness due to the cost-of-living crisis.
CEO Sleepout staged an event in Manchester City Centre to show the “once unthinkable” reality facing millions of professionals who now find themselves struggling to survive.
Research by the homelessness charity has revealed that, in Manchester alone, a homeless referral is made on average to the council every 90 minutes.
And on Wednesday (August 21), volunteers dressed as those professionals highlighted the charity’s simple yet stark message: Nobody’s safe.
“Once these were aspirational careers that allowed people to buy homes, go on holiday, and save for a brighter future. Now public sector workers are having to work a second job just so they can eat,” said Bianca Robinson, CEO of CEO Sleepout.
“Around ten per cent of police officers now depend on food banks, and over 500 nurses in the UK use them too. That’s a national disgrace.
“That’s why as a charity, CEO Sleepout wanted to drive home the message that nobody is safe from being made homeless in the UK.
“We’ve worked with people over the past year who have been at the very top of their profession, yet are now at risk of losing everything, and despite the last Government pledging to end rough sleeping by this year, there are now record levels of homelessness in this country.”
Nationally, there are currently over 300,000 homeless people in the UK, a figure that has swollen in part due to a lack of affordable housing and high rental costs, along with the economic downswing of the past few years.
Additionally, recent polling shows that around one in four young people believe they – or someone they know – could be made homeless in the next 12 months.
The surge in homelessness has resulted in UK-wide council spending on temporary accommodation tripling in just eight years.
In Manchester alone, figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that between October and December last year, there were 1,688 homeless applications to the council.
Additionally, there were 2,670 requests for temporary accommodation in the city last year.
For one local footballing legend, the scale of homelessness in the UK forced him to act.
Former Scotland international Lou Macari spent over a decade playing for Manchester United in the 70s and 80s. Having been moved by a news report on homelessness in Stoke, he launched a street retreat in the town – called The Macari Centre – to help house rough sleepers.
He has backed CEO Sleepout’s campaign to raise awareness of the “unfathomable scale” of homelessness in the UK.
“The homelessness situation in this country is dire,” said Lou, who launched his retreat back in 2016.
“Over the past decade the problem has only intensified, and it has been left up to charities like ourselves and CEO Sleepout to pick up the slack.
“That isn’t right, and we want the Nobody’s Safe campaign to drive home how just how many people are now living on the edge – and how urgent action is needed to ensure they don’t fall off.”
Having raised over £4.5m to date to fight homelessness and poverty, CEO Sleepout is staging its annual Manchester sleepout on October 28.