Prince William has a new project for the homeless, announced during his vacation

One of my craziest royal opinions is that Prince William actually does care about homelessness and he’s actually trying to find some smaller, local solutions to issues around homelessness. Everything around “William homelessness” is completely bonkers though. For one, the British media HATES when William toots his own “Homeless Savior” horn, and they regularly and correctly call him out as a dilettante on this issue. Secondly, William overpromises and underdelivers – he claims he’s “solving homelessness” and then he’s shocked when those claims get thrown back in his face with hard data. What he’s actually doing isn’t so bad – creating new low-income housing on a small scale, funding smaller projects in targeted localities – it’s just that he behaves as if he’s god’s gift to homeless people and he speaks and acts like he’s doing a lot more than he really is.

Add to all of that, William’s personal decisions and lifestyle ruins what little credibility he might have on these issues. Same with his environmental work – it’s difficult to take him seriously as an environmentalist OR homeless advocate when he has four homes and he’s publicly lobbying for a whole-ass fort, not to mention all of the private planes, the endless helicopter usage and, most recently, the vacation on a megayacht. Oh, and he’s on his seventh vacation of the year. Well, guess who’s got a brand new homeless project? The announcement came just a day after his megayacht vacation was finally reported in the Daily Mail. The announcement also came during Willy’s summer vacation, so it’s not like he was there to do an event around this new thing:

Prince William is backing the building of new homes in an underserved part of London. The Prince of Wales, 43, has seen his project for the unhoused make new inroads into solving part of the problem with a new partnership that is set to help young homeless people.

His five-year Homewards mission aims to make homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated,” as William puts it. Operating across six areas of the U.K., it is trying locally-based innovations and ideas to combat the issue. Now, in Lambeth, south London, 16 new homes are set to be built in a partnership with his Duchy of Cornwall and the Centrepoint charity that William is patron of.

Lambeth is the third area to have new housing, following Aberdeen in Scotland and Sheffield in northern England. Homewards has also spearheaded the Duchy of Cornwall’s new housing project in Nansledan in Cornwall.

With planning approved, work is set to start soon on the conversion of an existing building into 16 independent living apartments for young people aged 18 to 25 in Lambeth. Homewards says it will “provide affordable homes that act as a bridge between supported accommodation and the private rented sector.”

The homes will be managed by Centrepoint, a charity with which William has been linked for most of his public life. It will be part of the charity’s Independent Living Programme, which aims to break the cycle of homelessness. The homes will be targeted at those young people already employed, and a number of the homes will be allocated to those moving towards employment, providing a vital test of a new model to get people into housing and jobs at the same time.

With the average monthly private rent in Lambeth around $3,000, affordable housing for young people trying to find employment or in their first jobs is at a premium. The charity’s chief executive, Seyi Obakin, said in a statement that Centrepoint was delighted to work with the Duchy and the local council on the housing project “to demonstrate that eradicating youth homelessness is achievable.”

“Centrepoint is committed to ending youth homelessness in the U.K., and we know that can only be achieved through collaborative effort. By linking rent to individual income levels, this Innovative Housing Project offers more than shelter — it offers young people the stepping stone they need to pursue their careers, build financial resilience, and transition out of homelessness for good.”

[From People]

Again, if you just take these projects on their own, without any of William’s keen PR or his own words, the work is fine. It’s great to see smaller-scale projects dedicated to the creation of low-income housing, targeting the specific homeless youth demographic. Now, is it a little bit funny that William avoided making the announcement himself, in person, because he just got back from a vacation on a megayacht and now he’s on another vacation at his fourth home? Yes.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.