Monarchist, I ain’t. Pragmatist, I am. So if Prince William wants to have a crack at ending homelessness via a new initiative called Homewards and pilot it in six test regions, I say – have at it, and good luck to you. But if you’re going to publicise it with a two-part documentary on ITV I’m afraid I am professionally bound to judge you on your degree of involvement and understanding of the project, alongside your telegenic articulacy and charm, and put aside the predisposition of fondness towards you that I feel for anybody I am old enough to remember being born. (You were so cute! I was eight! It was so exciting! Your picture went in my Diana, Princess of Wales scrapbook that I have since looked upon many times in utter bafflement that she and I were ever so young or foolish.)
Anyway. The heir to the throne scores pretty high in all categories. Were it not for the fact that I am still not entirely clear quite how Homewards is going to achieve its goal of making homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated”, it would be higher. I know it involves flagship locations, £500,000 from the Royal Foundation for each of them over five years, unlocking scalable solutions, asking communities, tailoring solutions (before or after scaling them I am not sure), reaching out, working from the bottom up, bringing people together, shining a light, putting aside failed thinking, building coalitions, replicating successes – but what this all adds up to I do not know.
