Amber Rudd should make tackling homelessness her first priority as work and pensions secretary

Today, some 320,000 British people – equivalent to the population of a city such as Bradford or Cardiff – have nowhere to call home. The majority will be in “temporary” accommodation, such as B&Bs; others will be in hostels; the least fortunate will find themselves sleeping on the streets – about 5,000 of them. The total is up around 4 per cent on last year – which was already a high figure – representing one in 200 British residents.

The housing crisis has gone on for so long and been so severe that the country seems to have begun to think that it is a normal and acceptable state of affairs – an inevitability. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. Many other countries of similar wealth do not have such an experience. In past decades homelessness was much less common than today, particularly among younger people. Failure to take decisive action for so long has incubated institutional complacency, and a degree of public apathy, in a way that it has not, for example, over schools or healthcare. Free access to these is regarded as basic rights for a British citizen and their family. Why not a roof over your head?

Bodies such as Shelter, who are launching their Christmas campaign today, do much to deal with the results of the lack of investment in housing and the shortcomings in the social security system. The dark, cold, dank winter months are particularly hard on homeless people, and they need support now more than ever, and every homelessness charity, and those allied to them such as the food banks, is worthy of support – cash donations, gift of clothing, volunteering,

However, the voluntary sector is simply too small to be able to address the underlying causes of the year-round crisis, and is hardly in a position of authority to do so.

First thing’s first, then, and the new work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd has a clear mission to fix what she has acknowledged are the weaknesses in the universal credit system. It is a reform that has become so complex and underfunded that it risks inflicting still further damage on the health and wellbeing of the most vulnerable in society, and that includes driving them from their homes if they cannot access the housing benefits to which they are entitled in a timely fashion.

If universal credit cannot itself be reformed or paused then it should be scrapped, no matter the cost to the public purse so far. If Ms Rudd feels able to issue a guarantee to every recipient that they will be no worse off under the new system – and will have no undue waits for their entitlements – that would at least be a start.

There is much more to do. Since the era of Thatcherism in the 1980s, the supply social housing has collapsed. The existing stock was long since sold off, and local authorities, until very recently, prevented by law from investing the proceeds in new schemes. The austerity regime since 2010 has hit councils especially hard, and the fact that even Conservative-controlled shire authorities are going bust should indicate that something has gone very wrong indeed. Perhaps it was politically convenient for Westminster politicians to devolve austerity – and the blame for its consequences – to town and county halls, but it is a policy that has been deeply against the interests of every citizen.

Even after Brexit the pressures of demographic change will build, and the demand for housing will continue. It is the supply of housing that has driven prices and rents higher, and has pushed many out of the system. Increasing the supply of private homes, even with quotas for “affordable” places is rarely the answer for those with few resources of their own – no job, no money for a deposit, no money full stop.

Good-quality social housing was something that the British used to be good at, and the main parties used to compete with each other at general elections to see who could set the highest targets of new homes – half a million every year was typical in the decades after the Second World War.

Then it was needed to redress wartime losses and slum clearance. Today it is needed because there is so little left after the selloffs and the loss of funding. This time, though, the taxpayer should not be ripped off through a “right to buy” scheme that offers fortunate residents a hefty discount to buy something that is, in fact, the property of everyone. There is little point in building flats and houses simply to sell them off shortly afterwards. If that recurs then the social housing crisis, and the homelessness that lives with it, will never be resolved.