The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has described rough sleeping as a “lifestyle choice” while defending her decision to restrict the use of tents by homeless people on the streets of Britain.
According to Whitehall insiders, Braverman plans to crack down on tents that cause a nuisance in urban areas such as high streets – amid growing numbers of rough sleepers and what the government considers a rise in antisocial behaviour.
The home secretary has also proposed the introduction of a civil offence, which could lead to charities being fined if they provide homeless people with tents, the Financial Times reported.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Braverman defended her proposals, saying: “The British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.
“Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug-taking, and squalor.
There is a feral quality to SF that is starting to remind me of NYC in the late-‘70s and ‘80s.
You can see the establishment of other ways of being that assume zero input or oversight from organized systems. For example, the red-light running is legion and increasing. I regularly pop out for a single errand on my bike and witness three different drivers blowing through solid red lights.
The SFPD decided they want paid, but not to do the usual. So here we are.m and that’s why the feds and state police are getting to do the work.