Prince William is not leading on homelessness, as Lucy Mangan suggests in her review of the ITV1 documentary Prince William: We Can End Homelessness (Is a royal really the right person for this job?, 30 October). So I was surprised by Mangan’s closing line, when she said: “The question of who will if he doesn’t, though, should occupy us still.” The obvious answer is the well-developed charity sector, the plethora of experts and the government.
While government action is the source of any permanent solution, and leadership from politicians is sorely lacking, leadership from non-government actors is plentiful. What William is doing does not add to that collective charitable enterprise, but distracts from the root causes and the need for political consensus and state funding.
To suggest that there is little action without William is not only misplaced, it is rather insulting to the legion of people who work hard to alleviate the impact of homeless and to lift people out of immediate crisis.
Graham Smith
CEO, Republic
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