00:00Liverpool City Council is stepping up its fight against homelessness with a bold new five-year strategy aimed at making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring.
00:12It's sad to see it. I walked through this morning in my ambulance uniform and I saw people sleeping in the doorways and you just look and think, where did it all go wrong to be honest with you?
00:22So, I think it's got worse because the population has increased. I also think there's mismanagement in government overspending. That's very political and I don't know all the facts.
00:34I think everybody is not just here. It's an over, innit?
00:39The homelessness and rough sleeping strategy has been developed with input from residents, frontline organisations and those with lived experience.
00:47It's focused on prevention, early support and improving access to safe, sustainable housing.
00:54The council says its new approach will stop people becoming homeless in the first place, improve access to advice and wraparound support, strengthen partnerships with charities, the NHS and housing providers and increase the supply of temporary homes that keep people connected to jobs, schools and support networks.
01:17The council will look to procure more suitable, temporary and move on accommodation to replace the current reliance on B&Bs and hotels, which are often expensive and unsuitable for people in crisis.
01:32Another five-year plan, so it's probably someone else's idea that's probably already been done.
01:37I don't think they care, not unless they do something with structures that they've got.
01:41I've grown up here in the 60s when 15 years after the Second World War and we had like nothing and now I feel like we've got supposedly everything in society and yet you've got people who have got like nothing, nothing.
01:57The proposed changes are intended to give families and individuals more stable places to live while long-term housing solutions are found, which will see the council work closer with private sector partners to provide permanent homes.
02:12What I feel is really, really, really not used is the resources all around us.
02:18We've got Grade 1, Grade 2 listed beautiful buildings. Skilled trades could come in, volunteer potentially, get these beautiful wasted buildings up and running and then they could be facilitated.
02:31People want jobs. Give them jobs doing a mob.
02:35But I don't like to see the people on the streets and another five-year plan.
02:40Well, it'll be interesting to see because they've already had a five-year plan over the last five years and they had another five-year plan before that, so let's hope something works this time.
02:48The council says this new strategy is not just about saving money, it's about delivering better outcomes for people in crisis and rebuilding lives.
