HERE’S a conundrum for my fellow citizens dwelling in Austerity York. You’re walking down Coney Street after a pleasant meal or night out with friends, heading back to your warm home. You pass a figure huddled in blankets in a doorway. It is autumn and a dank, freezing river mist reaches into the town. A night for snuggling beneath cosy duvets, not sleeping out beneath harsh electric street lamps at the mercy of the weather.

Do you walk on past while reflecting on the fact that many street homeless people are there because of alcohol, drug and mental health issues, and all too often a combination of the three?

Or do you dip into your pocket for a few quid you can easily afford, even though you know it might be destined for the nearest off licence?

For years I chose the first course of action, reasoning that giving money to fuel a vulnerable person’s health-wrecking addiction helps nobody. Then came the years of austerity and gradually my thinking has changed.

Because all the evidence points to the fact that whether sober or high, job-seeking or benefit-claiming, there is simply not enough affordable housing out there for people facing homelessness. We have entered a crisis fuelled by government neglect.

As ever, if you care to look, the facts and figures are in the public domain. Last week the head of the National Audit Office (NAO), Amyas Morse, pointed out that Britain’s lack of a coherent housing policy is actually wasting huge sums of taxpayers’ money on expensive temporary accommodation for homeless families. The Government’s spending watchdog estimated the cost at a staggering £1bn a year, most of which swells the bank accounts of private landlords.

Mr Morse also condemned the Government’s “light-touch approach in the face of such a visibly growing problem,” adding that, “its recent performance in reducing homelessness therefore cannot be considered value for money”.

In addition to the huge numbers of homeless people in temporary accommodation, including 120,000 children, we must add the 4,134 rough sleepers counted and estimated on a single snapshot night in 2016, an increase of 134 per cent since the same exercise was undertaken in 2010.

This crisis goes beyond a mean-spirited attempt to make our most vulnerable citizens pay for the banking crash of 2008 (alternatively known as austerity). It feels like something far darker, a reproach to us all for tolerating the situation.

After all, if rents are too high and tenants’ rights too flimsy – and most authorities agree both problems lie at the heart of our homelessness crisis – finding a solution is not rocket science. Before 1988 this country, along with most developed nations, operated a system of legally-enforced rent caps called the Rent Acts. A deliberate policy of deregulation favoured by successive governments removed that safety net. But what worked in the past can work again. I say, let’s learn from our more prosperous European neighbours, like Sweden or Denmark, who must look in surprise at the level of homelessness in Britain.

As for York, it is clear that high rents and spiralling house prices, coupled with low wages, demand a logical solution. Only the provision of more affordable housing can ease the unnecessary suffering of homeless families and individuals. I would love to see a new era of top-quality council housing in York, linked to improved transport links for the suburbs and bold compulsory purchase schemes in the city centre. Of course, such obvious solutions would cost money. But it is all a question of priorities. After all, we are still one of the wealthiest nations in the world and seem to be able to afford ridiculous money-wasting projects like the planned Hinkley Point nuclear power station or historically low taxes for corporations. Besides, a widespread programme of investment in house-building would create many skilled jobs.

Personally, I no longer want to face the dilemma of whether to give a homeless person some spare change when I know full well we could easily solve the homelessness crisis. What we need for real change is compassion, vision and investment.