How Big Issue is holding Andy Burnham’s government to account on homelessness

Florence Eshalomi grew up living in temporary accommodation. Today she’s the homelessness minister with the actual power to change the lives of children in that same situation. 

It’s rare for a government minister to have real experience of the issues they’re tasked with fixing. Over recent times, some have been in posts for such short stints it must have been impossible for them to get a proper grasp of it. 

Not only has Eshalomi experienced homelessness in her own life, she was also the chair of the housing committee responsible for scrutinising Keir Starmer’s government. She knows the homelessness space better than most, but Andy Burnham’s pledge to end rough sleeping means she has an enormous brief.  

I met Eshalomi last week, at the Change Please coffee shop in Victoria. Launched 11 years ago, backed by Big Issue, it trains people facing homelessness to be baristas, giving them a job, accommodation advice, therapy and a bank account, helping them to turn their life around.  

It must be strange to be a politician on a visit like this. Some handle it more successfully than others. There is excitement, anticipation. A fleet of government staff is sent ahead to prepare the space. It becomes hushed when the esteemed guest arrives, and they are jostled through to exchange a few polite words with the most important person in the room before being given the grand tour, all to a tight schedule.  

Last month, Big Issue invited Labour big-hitters Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and John Healey to The Independence Initiative in Bootle, where they made apple crumble and stacked shelves with residents. At Change Please, Eshalomi was taught to make a professional cup of coffee and challenged by the baristas to make latte art.

People surrounded the minister as she tried her hardest with the cup of coffee (she confesses to being more of a tea person). It can all feel quite performative – but visits like this are important. They give ministers a chance to meet people living through homelessness and witness solutions. 

Having Big Issue in the room is important too, given our history of pioneering solutions to homelessness through our journalism, our vendors and through investing in social enterprises like Change Please. We know that giving people a route off the streets is possible. 

Read more:

• How will the government end rough sleeping? We asked the homelessness minister
• Florence Eshalomi named as homelessness minister: ‘I know what a difference a safe home makes’
• Big Issue has always been bad at promoting itself. Andy Burnham can teach us a lesson

We’re also deeply aware of the challenges. I recently shadowed the women’s rough sleeping census, walking two hours through the streets of Camden with a frontline worker in search of women sleeping rough. The idea is to count these women and build a more accurate picture of the scale of women’s homelessness. 

Except for a few empty tents and a librarian telling us he had recently seen women he believed to be homeless, there were almost no signs of women’s homelessness. But we know it’s there. It’s hidden and therefore so difficult to ensure no one is left behind in the government’s mission to get people off the streets by Christmas. 

A new project by University of Roehampton researchers could help. Two years ago, academics put trackers on people experiencing homelessness in London. Now they are tracking which businesses homeless people visit to build a heat map of their movements. It sounds dystopian, but as the researchers tell Lottie Elton, it should help councils coordinate their homelessness responses.  

After all, as Eshalomi reminded me, the government cannot end rough sleeping alone. It must be a collective effort. By buying the Big Issue and supporting our work, you are playing your part. We’ll keep playing ours. 

Isabella McRae is associate editor at Big Issue

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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