New Labour all but eliminated rough sleeping. How did it do it?

Sometimes the reason for failure is that we are not really trying hard enough.

LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 16: A homeless man sleeps in the door way of a theatre near Leicester Square on December 16, 2017 in London, England. Homeless charity Shelter have used official government and Freedom of Information data to estimate 307,000 people are sleeping rough or living in inadequate housing, which is an increase of 13,000 over the past year. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)

Some social problems are so large that policy makers are able to make only annoyingly minor inroads into them in any sensible period of time. Sometimes people act as though rough sleeping is one of these issues. They say people sleeping on the streets will always be with us.

But the Blair/Brown government showed that this just is not true. Although it never managed to eliminate rough sleeping completely, it did substantially reduce it. The latest figures from Shelter show rough sleeping has gone up by 169 per cent since that government left office in 2010. So what lessons does that period offer us now?