At the risk of exposing the British royal family’s over-housing, the Prince of Wales this week launched a new initiative, called Homewards, which aims to tackle the problem of homelessness and homeless people in the UK.
With this project, Prince William defines the main cause that he will defend in this new stage as Prince of Wales. And for this he has hatched a five-year action plan in which he will urge local companies, organizations and individuals to join forces and develop “tailor-made” maneuvers to address this social problem.
This humanitarian concern is not new to the prince, since his mother, Princess Diana, has already dedicated efforts to the cause and made her children aware of it. It was in 1993 when Lady Di took Guillermo and Enrique to visit a homeless shelter in London. Guillermo recalled earlier this year: “My mother introduced me to the cause of homelessness from a very young age, and I am so glad she did.”
He also assured that he is thinking about the best time to do the same with his children, Princes Jorge (9), Carlota (8) and Luis (5), although it is already a topic that he has wanted to talk to them about. “When we were in London, driving around, we used to see people sitting outside supermarkets and we would talk about it. He would tell the children: ‘Why are you there? What’s going on?'”.
For Guillermo it is very important that his children grow up knowing what reality is: “Some of us are very lucky, some of us need a little help and some of us have to do a little more where we can to help others to improve their lives”.
Guillermo, who turned 41 last Wednesday, began after the death of his grandmother, Elizabeth II, a new stage as the heir to the British crown, a position that brings with it more responsibilities and more force for action.
Now William is the beneficiary of the Duchy of Cornwall, a title linked to the British heir who in turn has attached ownership of a total of 526 square kilometers of land in the United Kingdom. And for this reason, although there is still nothing official, the prince is looking for a way that some of the different buildings or plots within that estate can serve to alleviate the situation of the homeless, as The Telegraph published last month from December.
It’s clear that this cause means much more to him than just exchanging handshakes for funding. It was in December 2009 when Guillermo slept on the street in London to raise awareness and funds for the homeless. “I was very impressed by the people I met and the difficulties they suffer. I grew up in a palace, and seeing the opposite side, where the others face such great challenges, was a very powerful thing to see when I was young, ”he said then about that cold experience.
Guillermo faced a controversy last summer for his move to another royal residence a few months before the death of his grandmother. The renovation of Adelaide Cottage, a country estate near Windsor Castle, where he currently lives with his family, cost the public treasury millions of dollars. It would not have raised blisters if it were not because a decade earlier, when he got married, the also million-dollar renovation of apartment 1 A of Kensington Palace, his previous home, was justified, alluding to the fact that the prince would use it for decades, but it has not been like that .
The last few years have not been easy for Guillermo in the family sphere either. He has had to accept the change of status in his family, the flight to the United States and the revelations of his brother and the unfounded rumors of infidelity to Princess Catherine of Wales, which has not been spoken of again, since everything points to that it was the invention of the tabloids.
