Once bitten - twice shy.

'Their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.” Oscar Wilde 

Homelessness is a degrading, dehumanising situation that would not arise in any sane society. It is also totally unnecessary in the sense that if the workers decided, once and for all, to put an end to the system that gives birth to such iniquities, it could be done quickly and finally. Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens will be the venue on the 9^th to the “Sleep in the Park” charity event involving various media personalities to draw attention to the plight of the homeless. Bob Geldof will be present (Bono sent his apologies, he will be with his accountants and tax lawyers devising another off-shore evasion scheme.)

There is no good reason why sufficient homes should not be built. The "Catch 22" in capitalism is that if a million homes were built they could not be sold. We know they could be built. The materials and those skilled in the building trade exist, the only thing the homeless are short of is the money to pay rent or the mortgage.  The rent is too high, the income is too low; they cannot afford, or to use the jargon of the market, they do not constitute an effective demand. Poverty is the word, and the present increase in the number of homeless is due to just that. Compared to the complexities of capitalism socialism is a simple social system. Houses will be built for people to live in, not property portfolios for corporations to invest in and share-holders to receive dividends on.

Social Bite and Josh Littlejohn, the initiators of the 'Sleep In the Park' should heed the lesson of Shelter which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary.  The homelessness 'problem' existed long before Shelter and will persist for another 50 years unless we bring an end to capitalism.  Those supporting “Sleep in the Park” should note Shelter has been on the reformist treadmill for half a century so we hope they have booked their sleeping bag for next year..and the year after...

The market system portrays itself as a dynamic, productive and creative mechanism. By incentivising the entrepreneurs (so the fairy-tale goes) capitalism liberates businesses to produce more houses and more choice. The only problem with this superficially-appealing narrative is that capitalism is not in fact geared to the production of homes per se, but rather is tailored to the production of profit. The UK homebuilding sector is under investigation because – bafflingly – they seem unable or unwilling to build sufficient homes. So what's happened? Why has the market failed? Why has the magical driving force of demand not triggered increased supply in this sector? The notion that the price mechanism is the most efficient allocator of resources took a further blow recently with the confirmation that Britain has a massive deepening housing shortage crisis. The reason is that inside a market-based system of buying and selling, wealth is not produced to meet human needs of the entire population, but instead to meet the profit expectations of the minority who monopolise ownership and control of the means of producing wealth (in this case, the housebuilding employers). For many years now it has been in their interest to keep the brake on the rate of releases of houses to the market, as this helps keep the price up: better to make 30 percent profit selling one house at £200,000, than make 20 percent profit on two houses at £150,000. And, of course, every plot of land they build on is one less house they can sell in the future, and the housebuilders don't see the price falling in years to come. In the ideal theoretical market – beloved of the apologists of capitalism – this shouldn't happen. But in the real world, the housebuilders are far from being independent economic agents and can be more co-operative than competitive. The market system itself creates nothing beyond profit and misery.

The hundreds of thousands of vacant houses and second holiday-homes plus all the empty and superfluous offices will be occupied immediately by a family at present homeless. A simple socialist solution to a problem that capitalism finds insoluble. This is the madness of capitalism - houses and buildings lying empty while people are forced to sleep in the street. The madness of the market will have to give way to a co-ordinated system of production for use, with free access to the goods, materials, and services available to society. It's time to put capitalism out of its misery and thereby help put us—the world working class—out of ours. Josh Littlejohn and Social Bite should take note that trying to patch-up capitalism is a thankless task. No sooner is one problem is fixed than another appears, often, as here, the result of the previous remedy.

One of England's renowned judges, Lord Denning, in a case against some squatters made the following statement:
 "If homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe. Necessity would open a door which no man could shut . . . So the courts, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless; and trust that their distress will be relieved by the charitable and the good" (our emphasis).