Prince William’s anti-homelessness drive is the right kind of royal meddling

The Prince of Wales’s pitch to tackle one of the great social ills of the modern age is a noble one, but his well-meaning efforts won’t stop critics crying foul of royal involvement in politics, writes Sean O’Grady

In our hyper-politicised world, where anything from the Titan submersible tragedy to Glastonbury can be turned into a culture war, solutions to homelessness are actually some of the more emotive issues one can get entangled in (PA Archive)

Prince William’s latest initiative, Homewards, almost died of embarrassment before it was properly launched. “William: I’ll end homelessness” read the banner adorning The Sunday Times’s splash, a pledge that would have been beyond even a mighty medieval monarch, let alone the politically powerless heir apparent in our modern constitutional monarchy.

Fortunately for all concerned, it turns out the Prince of Wales’s ambition is more realistic: to make homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated”. It is a perfectly laudable ambition, though still a formidable and politically hazardous one, and is just the kind of thing he should be doing in his position if the institution of monarchy is to survive. As Prince Philip said, they will stick around as long as people find them “useful”, and this type of work, funded by the Royal Foundation charity, could be very useful indeed.

As described by William Hague, who chairs William’s charity, the foundation will be involved in and lead six pioneering pilot schemes that will try and get government, local authorities, quangos, charities and private businesses to work together.