Passport to homeless blues
Ministers slammed for making a crisis out of homeless-mess
A committee of MPs has accused the Government of complacency when it comes to helping the homeless, yet it has done more than most to boost their ranks through its desire to create a welfare-lite nation of homeowners. So, writes Mark Cantrell, is it any wonder ministers are struggling to resolve this “national crisis”?
WHEN it comes to the UK Government’s approach to resolving homelessness, perhaps it’s apt to misquote Marie Antoinette: “Let them have a blue passport.” They’ll still be homeless — but at least they can be assured of their British identity (if they can afford the fee).
That’s rather facetious, no doubt, but many of the Government’s policies — housing and welfare packages being prime candidates — have more or less served to ‘passport’ greater numbers of people into homelessness. Under the Conservative Party’s watch — first under David Cameron now under Theresa May — levels have soared.
If this was a measure of success, then the Government’s record since 2010 has been phenomenal. But it’s not. Instead, the numbers provide a tally of abysmal failure. And it has been duly noted.
Earlier this week, in a damning report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of MPs declared that homelessness in England has reached “national crisis” proportions. The Government, meanwhile, is judged as “utterly complacent” and its efforts to resolve the situation an “abject failure”.
The latest figures released by the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) a few days ahead of the PAC report show the scale of the problem. They reveal that as of 30 September 2017, the number of households placed in temporary accommodation had reached 79,190.
This figure is six per cent higher than it was in the same period last year, when 74,750 were in temporary accommodation. What’s more, it’s a staggering 65 per cent higher than the 48,010 recorded on 31 December 2010.
Many of these are households with children, PAC points out — 120,000 languish in temporary accommodation. For young people, such dire circumstances can be a damaging experience, hampering their education, risking their health, and otherwise blighting their life chances. It’s no picnic for adults, either.
Then there’s the ‘classic’ homeless: the rough sleepers. Their number has risen by an eye-watering 134 per cent since March 2011, with as many as 9,100 people sleeping on the streets on any one night: an “appalling” situation, for sure.
Beyond these, we have the so-called hidden homeless, those who aren’t captured by official statistics. Hard to quantify but known to exist, these are the ‘sofa surfers’ who find a place to stay with friends and family on a shifting, ad hoc basis. Festive cheer only goes so far…
“The latest official figures hammer home the shameful state of homelessness in England, and the abject failure of the Government’s approach to address the misery suffered by many thousands of families and individuals,” said Meg Hillier MP, PAC’s chair.
“As we approach Christmas there are thousands of children in temporary accommodation — a salutary reminder of the human cost of policy failure. The evidence we heard from organisations that work with homeless people should serve as a wake-up call: Government decisions are not made in a vacuum and the consequences can be severe.”
The gist of PAC’s report makes it clear that this is an avoidable tragedy: homelessness is solvable and even avoidable, if only ministers could pull together to formulate a joined-up approach — and find the political resolve required to tackle homelessness. Indeed, this “national crisis” could have been nipped in the bud years ago, much like the housing crisis itself (but that’s another story).
“We must act now,” said Terrie Alafat CBE, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), speaking in response to the recent DCLG figures. “It is quite simply a national outrage that so many people are homeless in England in 2017.
“There has been a frankly unacceptable rise in the number of households in temporary accommodation… which is often very poor quality and highly unsuitable. History tells us that we can reduce or even eliminate homelessness but it does require a co-ordinated approach — that means government investment, funding for affordable housing and a concerted effort across the housing and homelessness sectors.”
Alafat’s view reflects PAC’s findings. As the MPs’ report notes, while some Government policies seek to alleviate homelessness, policies elsewhere undermine or even neutralise these efforts.
“This report confirms the fact that some government policies are causing homelessness while others are attempting to pick up the pieces. The good news is that with the right changes in policy, homelessness can be ended,” said Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the homelessness charity, Crisis.
“Over Christmas and throughout winter, thousands of people across the country will be sleeping out in the cold, and thousands more will be trapped in unsuitable temporary accommodation, or sleeping in cars or on public transport, hidden from help. The mental and emotional impacts of this crisis cannot be understated: the average age of death of a homeless person is just 47 years old, and they are nine times more likely to commit suicide than the general public. This cannot go on.
“Last month we welcomed the Government’s pledge to establish a Homelessness Reduction Taskforce. Now, the taskforce must quickly get to work and take forward the recommendations of this report, particularly to ensure that welfare reform tackles rather than causes homelessness, and also to join the Government’s housing strategy with the need for truly affordable homes for homeless people. When we know that homelessness can be ended and prevented from happening in the first place, there’s no excuse not to act.”
Ministers may well be genuine in their desire to alleviate homelessness. Certainly, they have taken some laudable steps. Back in 2010, for instance, then housing minister Grant Shapps came up with the No Second Night Out scheme, in an effort to reduce rough sleeping in the capital.
More recently, the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, introduced as a private members’ bill, received widespread cross-party support to become statute. The Act places new duties on local authorities to provide assistance to those who have become homeless. More pertinently, it places greater emphasis on steps to help prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.
Welcome measures, these may have been, but they are somewhat tokenistic in the wider scheme of things, and indeed policies in other areas serve to make a cruel mockery of their good intent. With the Homelessness Reduction Act, for example, a lack of genuinely affordable housing is likely to undermine its capacity to make a real difference.
As it is, a lack of genuinely affordable homes for rent or sale is one of the root causes of the homelessness crisis, particularly the huge loss of social rent homes. This is compounded by welfare reforms and cuts in housing support that have left growing numbers of people unable to meet their rent payments. In short, Government policies have made housing more expensive, while also cutting the financial support available for households already struggling to pay their housing costs.
Home ownership has long been a flagship Government aspiration. Among the first things the 2010–2015 Conservative-led coalition government did was to slash state investment in the construction of new social housing. Instead, it redirected public spending towards initiatives intended to help people buy a home — Right-to-Buy, Help-to-Buy etc — or to subsidise the construction of homes for outright sale or part-sale-part-rent. This shift saw billions of pounds that previously helped construct a vital social asset instead pumped into subsidising the private housing market.
The Government also implemented a funding regime for the construction of so-called Affordable Homes, for rent and sale, which made a mockery of the word ‘affordable’. All-too-often such homes, let out at up to 80% of average local market rents, proved to be too expensive for those who need them most. Housing associations were also encouraged (arm twisted?) to reclassify social rent homes as Affordable Rent as and when they came up for relet — basically making them more expensive.
The net effect of this has been a drastic reduction in the availability of social rent housing, and the virtual collapse of the construction of new social rent homes. As a result, many more lower income households have had to rent in the less secure and more expensive private rented sector.
This, of course, has an impact not only on the homeless — or those at risk of losing their home — but on efforts to help them find or keep a roof over their heads. It may not be homelessness by design, but certainly by unintended (and entirely predictable) consequences.
“There is an unacceptable shortage of realistic housing options for households that are either homeless or are at immediate risk of homelessness,” the PAC report notes. “The decreasing number of homes available for social rent means that many local authorities use private accommodation providers to meet this need.
“This accommodation is often of a poor standard and does not offer value for money. Some of the most vulnerable households at risk of homelessness can also find that they only have limited options for rehousing in the private rented sector. Shelter told us that six out of ten landlords nationwide will not let to people in receipt of benefits due to concerns that their income is unstable and will not rise in line with the cost of renting.”
PAC’s Hillier added: “The Government must do more to understand and measure the real-world costs and causes of homelessness and put in place the joined-up strategy that is so desperately needed.
“That means properly addressing the shortage of realistic housing options for those at risk of homelessness or already in temporary accommodation. More fundamentally, it means getting a grip on the market’s failure to provide genuinely affordable homes, both to rent and to buy.
“Delegating a problem is not a solution and we do not share the Government’s faith in the cure-all potential of the Homelessness Reduction Act. There are practical steps it can take now — for example, targeting financial support on local authorities with acute shortages of suitable housing, rather than those councils which are simply ready to spend — that would make a real difference to people’s lives.”
Ministers may have placed too much faith in a “light touch” approach to dealing with homelessness, as PAC says, but in a twisted kind of way, they’ve not been idle on the matter either. The Government has worked hard on policies that have effectively driven people out of a secure place to call home, while crossing its fingers in hope that a handful of mitigating schemes will pick up the pieces. Little wonder the situation has become worse.
Homeless people are the collateral damage, you might say; hapless lambs sacrificed on the altar of ideological commitments to homeownership and welfare austerity. Maybe it’s not complacency as such that’s making a mockery of the Government’s efforts to alleviate the crisis, but a kind of cognitive dissonance — a belief that the contradictions in its policies can be resolved if only we eat enough cake…
Read the Public Accounts Committee’s report:
