United Kingdom
Nye Jones is a freelance opinion and features writer specialising in housing, homelessness, social policy and drug use. He has reported extensively on grassroots housing activism, regeneration and homelessness in London and beyond and has written for multiple publications including The Guardian and The Independent.
Reporting
A VICE News Freedom of Information request reveals that there has been a 26 percent drop in homes occupied at social rent on the contested Woodberry Down estate in east London.
Exclusive: Data obtained by Novara Media shows that London councils are paying landlords costly incentives to house tenants who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in private rented properties - many of them in poor condition. Nye Jones reports.
It's gentrification by any other name, helping councils to force out tenants and decimate public housing, says the freelance writer Nye Jones
Experts say many men have a 'sex problem' and are using drugs as the solution. Traditional treatment methods may not be enough. Kos' weekend escalates quickly. He planned to have a quiet few days off work but a couple of drinks and a line of the party drug mephedrone later, he's 'slamming' (injecting) crystal methamphetamine and having sex with multiple men at a stranger's party.
The Tories want people to believe homelessness is complex and rough sleepers are to blame for their situation. The truth is they have been let down by a system that could easily be changed if there was the political will to do so.
Opinion
Last Friday news broke that the government was quietly winding up local authority funding that had been allocated to house rough sleepers in hotels during the pandemic. Nye Jones argues they've done this because the suffering of rough sleepers serves as a warning.
Throwing money at landlords doesn't address the causes of homelessness, says housing campaigner Nye Jones
They encourage us to think that anyone who is homeless deserves it. A radical cultural shift is needed on this subject, says writer and housing campaigner Nye Jones
Only a coherent package of reforms can end rough sleeping Research by Crisis into the potential of a Housing First approach to tackling homelessness in Liverpool has found the policy could be five times more effective at helping people out of homelessness than current strategies - and also nearly five times more cost effective.
Imagine a world in which your identity rested solely on the type of home you lived in. A world in which people were defined as bedsitters, flat-sharers or one-up-one-downers, instead of a combination of complex intertwining factors like race, political beliefs, age, gender or sexuality.