In The London Economic

The so-called ‘miracle cure’ solution gives people homes when they need them without conditions attached, and has brought down homelessness by 70 per cent in Finland and eradicated poverty-based homelessness completely.

Burnham has worked tirelessly to bring homeless numbers down since he was first elected in 2017, and has even been donating 15 per cent of his salary to a homeless charity every month he’s been in the job.

Now, after a successful pilot of a similar housing first scheme in Greater Manchester, which has supported 430 people with complex experiences of homelessness, Burnham is bidding for government funding to extend it beyond the current deadline of March 2025.

“I kept hearing people talking about Finland and housing first, so I just thought, well, I better get over there and have a look. So I went, and it was sort of life-changing, actually”, the Manchester Mayor said when he was first elected.

He has since worked hard to PR the initiatives to the public, saying it financially makes sense.

“It actually saves public money to do this,” he said. “It’s not as if we’re just asking for something, and it’s another pressure. The bigger you do housing first, the more you’ll save.”

She said: “Previous attempts have failed because they did not address the root cause of the problem: expansive human rights laws flowing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), replicated in Labour’s Human Rights Act, are being interpreted elastically by courts domestic and foreign to literally prevent our Rwanda plan from getting off the ground.

“And this problem relates to so much more than just illegal arrivals. From my time as home secretary, I can say that the same human rights framework is producing insanities that the public would scarcely believe.

“Foreign terrorists we can’t deport – because of their human rights. Terrorists that we have to let back in – because of their human rights. Foreign rapists and paedophiles who should have been removed but are released back into the community only to reoffend – because of their human rights.”