(Pic: Crisis shop, Walworth, one of many organisations aiding the streets of London)

The struggle to house these vulnerable people across the UK, especially in London, is rapidly growing everyday but is something being done about it? Olivia Kemp reports

Homelessness is one of Britains’ biggest crisis’ and has been rapidly increasing through the past few years. A charity shelter has estimated that 300 thousand people are sleeping on the streets in Britain, which is equivalent to 1 in every 1 in 200 people, in London this is an even bigger problem. 1 in 59 people in London are on the streets, many of those being the younger generation.

Many charities across London are doing what they can to help out the homeless, one charity in particular called “Shop from Crisis“, which can be located in Elephant & Castle, Hackney and Finsbury Park, have a range of paid employees and volunteers are helping the homeless with training and employment opportunities. Crisis recorded that over 4000 homeless people slept rough in the autumn of 2016 alone. A employee at Shop from Crisis, Jasmine Allen, explained: “The shop raises money for charity crisis, which helps homeless people get out of homelessness long-term. The shop is also dynamic in the fact that they help train homeless people in retail, so we’ve got an accredited training scheme running which homeless people can get a level 1 award in retail. They come in and do 12 hours a week and by the end of it they receive this award which is an equivalent to 1 GCSE”.

This is just one charity in London that is doing what they can for the homeless, there are also hundreds of others such as Homeless Link, Streetsmart Action for Homeless, Single Homeless Project and many more. With the number of homelessness growing each year, will charities like these stop and prevent people from living on the streets? We can only hope that this will make a difference.