NO RESIDENT in Brighton and Hove wants to see anybody without a safe place to live or sleeping on our streets. It’s against our values as a city because having a home is a basic human right.

Addressing the housing crisis and rough sleeping is a key priority for the council. It is one of the areas that we are working on closely with the Green Party.

We are the fifth largest economy in the world yet, according to housing charity Shelter, a household in England became homeless every four minutes last year.

Homelessness can affect anyone. The main causes include the end of a tenancy, losing a job, relationship breakdown or bereavement.

Some people who are homeless end up rough sleeping. Over the past 12 months we have supported more than 500 rough sleepers.

We have a Severe Weather Emergency Protocol shelter locally. You may know this as SWEP. When bad weather hits, we activate the SWEP shelter so that homeless people can stay warm and dry.

Next month we are opening a 365-day-per-year shelter to ensure there is somewhere for rough sleepers to go all year-round. The service will be run by YMCA Downslink Group and the Churches Night Shelter Project at St Patrick’s Church in Cambridge Road, Hove.

We have successfully lobbied the Ministry of Housing for grants to fund the “no second night out” and “somewhere safe to go” schemes to combat the catastrophe of people sleeping rough.

We are supporting the opening of new homeless hostels around the city and are always looking to increase our provision to ensure nobody is forced to sleep on our streets.

We want to hear your views on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping in the city, including a homeless bill of rights.

Your responses will help shape the council’s approach over the next five years.

The survey on developing the city’s new Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy 2020-25 is open until December 8.

Sadly though, rough sleeping is only the tip of the iceberg of the homelessness crisis we face. For every rough sleeper in Britain, there are more people in temporary and emergency accommodation.

That’s why our approach to homelessness includes early intervention and prevention where we work with vulnerable people and try to keep them in housing before they end up on the streets. In the last year we’ve supported more than 400 vulnerable households to stay off the streets.

If you want to help tackle homelessness in our city and if you can spare a few pounds, then please consider donating to “Make Change Count” at www.justgiving.com/campaign/mcc19.

This fundraising campaign brings together a range of organisations who support rough sleepers. All the money donated goes to people in need; paying for clothing, food, access to shower facilities, healthcare, and outreach work.

It’s going to be a cold, wet winter, and the more support this campaign gets, the more resources these charities and organisations will have to help vulnerable people in our city.

We feel the housing crisis acutely here with soaring prices driving people out of the area. It is a huge problem for people on low incomes and in particular, for young people. You may remember that I mentioned the “lost generation” of 20 to 40-year-olds who are moving out of the region because they can’t afford to stay and make our city their home.

This will have a huge impact on us in the future. A shortage of homes combined with the sale of council housing over many years has reduced the stock of affordable housing and put a huge strain on local councils, who want everyone to have a place to call home.

Here in Brighton and Hove we have 9,000 households on the housing waiting list and more than 1,750 households currently in emergency and temporary accommodation.

That’s why the council has plans to build 800 more council homes across the city. But we need private developers to do their bit too.

For too long private developers have been gaming the planning system, using loopholes and sidestepping our 40 per cent affordability quota when building new homes. As a local council, we are doing everything in our power to combat the housing crisis and tackle homelessness, but until we have a government who are equally committed to this battle, we will forever be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.