The Guardian newspaper announced on Saturday that thousands of rough sleepers and homeless people had been given one-way train, bus and flight tickets by UK councils in the last four years.
The report added that the destinations chosen for the homeless people by the councils showed they were seeking to have them leave areas and sometimes even leave the country.
Some campaigners and MPs have criticized the councils for their “reconnection policies” in which they allegedly seek to encourage rough-sleepers to voluntarily return to areas where they have family and support networks.
They say the policy is a form of “street cleansing” by the councils as they struggle to reduce homelessness and rough-sleeping rates in their areas.
Rough-sleepers have also challenged councils’ notion that the tickets are voluntarily accepted and given when authorities make sure that there are offers for accommodation and support at the destination. They say that tickets were chosen against their wills and pushed them to places where they had never been.
“There was nowhere for me to go. They tried looking for hours and hours and said the only thing on offer was a train ticket to get me to Birmingham. I said: ‘I just need somewhere to live. This is supposed to be a first-world country’,” Philip Sempers, 35, told The Guardian.
Homelessness and rough-sleeping is at its peak in Britain as hundreds of thousands were forced to spend the Christmas holidays on streets or on public transportation.
A series of austerity measures and changes to the government’s social welfare policy have been blamed for the surge in homelessness although the ruling Conservatives have mostly rejected their cuts have played a role.