There has been much focus on the ‘small boats’ in the media for some time now. Stopping desperate people from arriving on our shores seems to be the holy grail of solving the pressures on the asylum system, reducing the state bill for housing asylum claimants in hotels, and regaining some goodwill from the public. So called prevention strategies have famously included deterrents like sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, although that has been cut short before anyone actually went.
At the same time there has been a lot of talk about homelessness, particularly at this time of year. The appalling conditions people endure in Temporary Accommodation (TA), the plight of children spending years without the stability of a home, and the Local Authorities (LA) buckling under the ever increasing pressure on their budgets; these are issues that are beginning to capture the public imagination.
Increasingly there are overlaps between the Home Office (responsible for the asylum system) and the Department for Housing Communities and Local Government (responsible for homelessness), as they try to navigate how to help some of the most vulnerable people in the middle of a housing crisis.