Last week, Prince William was forced into revealing his income taxes since he became the Prince of Wales and took over the Duchy of Cornwall. William paid roughly £20 million in three years for his income on a duchy worth £1.2 billion. Much like his father, William is involved in a lot of sketchy financial situations, and similarly, these scandals are so dry and flavorless that they’re mostly ignored by the British press. The one thing people do understand is that William is a slumlord with a vast empire of poorly-insulated shacks, and his working-class tenants are largely stuck paying for their repairs out of pocket. But William also wants to be known as the savior of homelessness, and he’s back to talking about homelessness this week.

Homelessness is not the fault of the individual but the “systems” that fail them, the Prince of Wales will say on Tuesday. The Prince, who is marking three years of his Homewards project, will say that research now shows it is possible to end homelessness.

“Homelessness is not an individual failure; it is a systemic failure. And, if systems help create the problem, then systems can help prevent it,” he will say. “By trialling new approaches, Homewards is demonstrating how prevention can be embedded across every part of our society. Proving that our true strength emerges not in isolation, but in a shared purpose that makes us greater than the sum of our parts.”

Hazel Detsiny, the executive director for homelessness at the Royal Foundation, said they were now seeing “green shoots and clear evidence of what works in practice to prevent homelessness”.

When asked what her meetings with the Prince were like, Ms Detsiny said: “Punchy, I would say. But the question that the Prince always asks me is ‘How will we know this has worked at the end of five years and how will we know it’s worked for long-term change?’ If we start to change the culture, if people across the whole society think differently, act differently, work together, feel optimistic, then that will also be part of that sustainable long-term change that will spread to other places.”

She went on to say: “We’re not claiming that we’ve got all the answers. We’re only at the halfway point, but we are now seeing green shoots and clear evidence of what works in practice to prevent homelessness and how we can then move on to deliver at scale over the next years.”

[From The Telegraph]

“Punchy?” What a well-selected word. William must be an absolute trainwreck in those meetings with his own staff. Note what else Hazel Destiny says, which should have been said by William: “We’re not claiming that we’ve got all the answers.” That’s how William should have approached Homewards, that’s how this project should have been billed – we don’t have all the answers, but we’re trying this out to see if we can see a tangible impact. Instead, William has gone from bragging about his billion-pound slumlord duchy to promoting himself as the homelessness savior.

Incidentally, William spoke about homelessness a few weeks ago at the London Tech Week conference. He revealed another program at that conference – a program in which Homewards is partnering with banks and phone companies to spy on their own clients as a way to “predict homelessness.” As I wrote at the time, “this sounds less about preventing homelessness and more like giving banks and businesses unfettered permission for an outrageous breach of sensitive data collection. It also sounds like they’re more concerned about monitoring homelessness rather than solving.”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kensington Palace’s Instagram.