Recently, friends from around the country have remarked on a phenomenon in passing. On their streets and in their city centres – in Liverpool, Oxford, Edinburgh and Manchester – they have started noticing more homeless people huddled in doorways at night or begging outside pubs.

Is this simply because more of us are noticing homelessness, and talking about it, where before we charged past, self-involved and wrapped up in our own troubles?

Not according to the data: government figures show a 30% increase in the number of rough sleepers in one year. In the past five years, the number has more than doubled, rising 102% to 3,596 since 2010.

These facts should shame the country, and the government. Instead, funding for homelessness services has been drastically reduced. According to Homeless Link, there were 36,540 bed spaces for single homeless people in England in 2015, 7,115 fewer than in 2010. Four in 10 homeless accommodation projects saw their funding fall over the same period. When there are no beds, people sleep rough, and their chances of finding accommodation again are slim.

Those trying to escape homelessness are scuppered at every turn. Hidden away in a Foreign Office white paper this week was a clause that prevents people accessing housing services in local authorities until they have lived in the borough for four years.

People leave their local areas for all sorts of reasons, especially when they’re homeless – fleeing abusive partners, escaping families, or simply because the cost of living is too high. Telling them to be mobile and flexible when it comes to seeking work and a better life doesn’t work when you bar someone from the most basic safety net society can offer.

Perhaps the invisible hand of the market can help? Alas, private landlords are completely averse to letting flats to tenants with no current address. Crisis surveyed 800 landlords, and found that 82% were unwilling to let to tenants without a fixed address: one in five would increase the deposit, and 16% said they’d increase the rent. So, to get a home you need a permanent address. But without a permanent address, you’ll be unlikely to ever get one.

Even then, the threat of homelessness looms constantly if you claim even the most meagre benefits. Emma, a single mother in Hackney, told me that her landlord was evicting her and her young son Bobby from the flat they’d lived in for four years in order to put the rent up. Emma works full time, but because rents in the capital are sky high, claims housing benefit to make ends meet. Time and again, she meets landlords who will happily write “No DSS” in adverts and refuse to even show her properties because she claims housing benefit.

Emma and other private renters are planning a protest outside Hackney town hall on 27 February to put pressure on councillors and letting agents after a mystery shopper experiment that visited 50 estate agents found just one studio flat (one!) that was available to tenants on benefits.

Many of these problems could be solved quite simply. Instead of grandstanding and cheap vote-grabbing tactics like pledging to build starter homes that are still unaffordable, the government could simply invest in building social housing. Leaving housing up to the whim of a largely unregulated group of private landlords means they’re picky about the tenants they let to, and see their role as a financial transaction with no social worth.

To give homeless people the chance to re-enter society you need homes. To give children the chance to have a happy childhood and learn and develop in a safe environment, you need homes. To help people on low incomes earn more and save, you need homes that don’t require extortionate deposits and letting agent fees.

Housing is too important to be left to the market, and frankly, the market can’t be trusted not to run roughshod over people’s lives. If we ever hope to solve homelessness and make sure no one needs to sleep in a doorway in the dead of winter, we need more social housing. Housing should be a basic human right, and the state should accept that homelessness shames us all.

Join the Guardian Housing Network to read more pieces like this. Follow us on Twitter (@GuardianHousing) and like us on Facebook to keep up with the latest social housing news and views.