Tag: Homelessness

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This World Homelessness Day let’s raise our ambitions

The scale of homelessness across in England is unacceptable and is getting worse. Last week, the annual official figures showed that more than 320,000 households accessed help from their council last year – the highest figure ever recorded. It is vital that our response, as a sector, and in the corridors of political power, rises to the scale of the challenge. Let’s use this World Homelessness Day as a platform for bold, positive ambition.

In Westminster, we are in a rare moment of possibility, where fundamental change feels possible. Post-election I was delighted to see the Deputy Prime Minister commit to a new strategy – one that will tackle all forms of homelessness, not just rough sleeping – and the establishment of an inter-ministerial group to unlock the solutions across government. The commitment to work alongside Councils and Mayors also signals a fresh and empowering approach.

New energy and answers to homelessness are on the way. But what are the ingredients for success? What does bold and positive reform involve? Here are five key elements for success:

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A housing-led plan

The pledge to build 1.5 million homes over the next 5 years offers the foundation for a breakthrough on homelessness. It is critical that a substantial proportion of these homes are delivered at social rent (the research suggests at least 90,000 a year) with local housing targets based on levels of homelessness in each area.

But it is not only about more supply. A housing-led approach to addressing homelessness is also about moving people quickly into a home of their own with the right support so they can build a foundation for everything else. This means actively decreasing the use of temporary accommodation.

A housing led approach is now the norm in many European countries, as recommended by the OECD, and is even the suggested approach for tackling homelessness in Ukraine. It is a long overdue paradigm shift in England.

Prevention

All too often, opportunities to prevent homelessness are known, but missed. Any strategy to address homelessness must have prevention as its cornerstone. There is a lot to learn from proposals in Scotland and Wales, where there are respective plans to introduce legislation that prevents homelessness at least 6 months before it occurs and to extend legal duties to wider public services.

The Homelessness Reduction Act was a vital step in the right direction in England, but it is time to go further so that the full public sector is working to prevent homelessness.

Addressing immediate need

Successful strategies must of course have long-term goals, and there are excellent examples in Denmark, Finland and elsewhere to draw on. However, in the here and now, homelessness is a humanitarian issue on our streets, hostels, B&Bs, and elsewhere. It is ruining lives and driving council finances to bankruptcy (the bill for temporary accommodation is £2bn and rising). We need to stop things getting worse whilst simultaneously working on the long-term reforms.

There is an opportunity in the upcoming budget to give councils the tools to address short term need, asking them to help more people out of homelessness by removing the cap for the temporary accommodation subsidy and by investing in Local Housing Allowance. We can also shift funding right now through the Affordable Homes Programme to deliver more social homes.

Focus on outcomes

Over the last 10 years in England, the political focus has been on tackling rough sleeping, neglecting the wider forms of homelessness. This has incentivised a focus on limited action and solutions. Of course, many good things happened because of this, and we should not lose sight of that. But we must also be honest in pointing to the range of other ways in which policies drove homelessness in the wrong direction; from the treatment of prison leavers; punitive welfare changes; the ‘hostile environment’ for people with no recourse to public funds, and of course the failure to build social housing.

The alternative approach is to agree the outcomes that all government policy should be driving towards – outcomes such as more people living in safe, secure homes, less expenditure on temporary accommodation and reductions in repeat homelessness. The Government need look no further than Wales, where such a framework was recently agreed and published.  

Localism

The increase of English devolution and Mayoral power has massive opportunities to show local leadership, progress elements of a homelessness strategy and test solutions at a local level that can be replicated elsewhere. We have seen examples of this already such as in Greater Manchester with an adoption of a ‘housing first’ philosophy for all residents of the city region to have a safe and secure home.

Right now, tens of thousands are trapped in poor quality temporary accommodation, hostels, night shelters, or forced to sleep on the streets, in cars, sheds, and public transport. We have a huge opportunity to ensure no-one experiences the trauma of homelessness again or when it does it is rare, brief and unrepeated. Let’s work together to make this happen.

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Labour has a proud record of halving homelessness – three steps which will enable us to do it again

We were genuinely heartened when it was revealed in June that Angela Rayner planned to create a new Ending Homelessness Unit if Labour won the General Election.

Labour has a proud record on this issue with previous administrations more than halving the number of households living in temporary accommodation between 2005 and 2010.

This achievement was even sustained during and after the 2008 global financial crisis, with Labour reducing the number of homeless households living in temporary accommodation by almost a quarter (24%) during the recession.

Similarly, between 1999 and 2001, rough sleeping was reduced by two-thirds, reaching an all-time low in 2010.

Over the past couple of years, the soaring numbers of homeless children and households living in temporary accommodation represents a humanitarian crisis unfolding behind closed doors.

Creating a new Ending Homelessness Unit and placing it inside the Deputy Prime Minister’s office means there will be a real focus on tacking this humanitarian crisis at the heart of government. It also provides the new Homelessness Minister, Rushanara Ali with support from the very top of government.

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However, reducing the number of households in temporary accommodation will be an even tougher challenge this time around for the following reasons:

Firstly, in Q1 of 2024 the number of homeless children reached more than 151,000. This is already 16% higher than the number of homeless children during the previous peak in 2006, and continues to rise at record rates.

Secondly, the shortage of social housing has grown much more acute over the past 30 years.

In 1979, local authorities and housing associations managed 5.5 million homes at a time when the population of England was less than 47 million people.

As of March 2023 House of Commons researchers estimated there were around 3.8 million social homes in England at a time when the population of the country has grown by around 14m people to almost 61m people.

This means we have less social housing for people to move into leaving them stuck in temporary accommodation and hostels even when they are ready to move on.

Thirdly, the public finances have worsened and the resources currently available to the sector to tackle homelessness have been depleted.

However, we know what needs to be done to end rough sleeping and homelessness for people.

We can dramatically cut the number of people sleeping rough if targets are set and organisations are given the resources to achieve them.

These are three of the key steps the new government should take to halve homelessness again:

Ring-fenced funding

While public finances are tight, the new government must take an ‘invest to save’ approach if we are to reduce homelessness.

In the last financial year, government figures revealed that councils spent an eye-watering £2.3bn on temporary accommodation.

Over the past year, we have seen cash-strapped councils reduce funding for homelessness services at a time when homelessness is rising at record levels.

These specialist services are essential in ending the cycle of homelessness for thousands of people every year – and moving them on into general needs housing.

We understand why individual councils feel a need to cut homelessness services, as they weigh up the closure of one service against the closure of another.

However, it is important for government to understand that under-resourced councils closing homelessness services to balance their annual budget is a false economy.

Closing homelessness services means councils and ultimately taxpayers are forced to spend even greater sums of money on temporary accommodation, and it also means people affected by homelessness have worse outcomes and are trapped in homelessness for longer.

To end this vicious cycle, the government must provide ring-fenced funding for homelessness services to prevent cash-strapped councils from ending funding at a time when these services are needed the most.

We are calling on the new Government to ring-fence and increase long-term revenue funding for supported housing to ensure spending at least matches the £1.6bn per year allocated to local authorities under the last Labour government Supporting People programme in 2010.

Social housing targets

As well as the target for building 1.5m homes over the course of this Parliament we believe an annual target should be set for the delivery of new social homes.

By announcing a target publicly, the government creates pressure on the system to deliver the goal and a target it needs to reach consistently each year.

However, building new homes takes time.

Better use of existing housing stock

Riverside manage more than 75,000 homes as well as homelessness services across more than 160 local authority areas in England.

Insight from this experience leads us to think there is also an opportunity for central government and councils to unlock savings by making better use of existing housing stock.

Since 2019 Riverside has been running Sefton Families Service on behalf of Sefton Council, a service which helps break the cycle of homelessness for families placed in temporary accommodation.

The service sees residents live in a fully-furnished home on a 12-month trial period with intensive support provided by a Riverside support worker rather than in temporary accommodation.

The scheme currently has a 97% success rate with every participant transferring to a long-term social housing tenancy with Riverside. Indeed, the only exception was a family who wanted to move to a permanent home outside of Sefton.

Sefton Families Service has enabled 60families to break the cycle of homelessness, including one family who had previously had to move home 37 times.

As well as making a huge difference to the lives of the families it has supported, the service is estimated to have saved the council £1.6m over four yearscompared to the cost of temporary accommodation, which is over six times as expensive as Riverside’s service.

While there is a mountain to climb, by taking an ‘invest to save’ approach, we believe that this new Labour government can halve homelessness again.

And we know the whole homelessness sector wants to work with government to help them achieve this.

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If Life is a Ladder, We are Letting 136,000 Young People Per Year Fall

Image by Ketut Subyianko, licensed under Pexels

Imagine the transition from childhood to adulthood as a ladder. At each point you reach out there are rungs of opportunity – housing, education, hobbies, employment, training, qualifications.

Imagine there are people at the top and bottom of the ladder – parents, family, teachers, friends, tutors, mentors, youth workers – helping you navigate the rungs, keeping you on track and encouraging you when you struggle. If you fall, there is a harness of state support to catch you.

Now imagine that these rungs of opportunity keep disappearing from your grasp and you face discrimination at every turn. Imagine that the people you relied on to help you keep leaving, or perhaps were never there in the first place.

The harness has broken; suddenly all you have is yourself and a ladder with no rungs.

This is the situation which many of our young people who are experiencing homeless find themselves in when they come to New Horizon Youth Centre.

Young people come to us looking for housing support to restore a desperately needed rung on their ladder (a step onto the housing ladder, you might say), but they stay to climb further into employment, education, and training. They stay to build their support networks of people who don’t give up on them.

But how do we make sure that young people never face those challenges in the first place? When 136,000 young people experiencing homelessness are turning to their councils each year, it shows us that way too many young people have broken ladders.

So, fixing this must be fast, radical, and really work. That is why over 130 charities across the UK are campaigning for a cross-departmental Government strategy to end youth homelessness: a #PlanForThe136k.

This collective knows what works when ending youth homelessness and they know how to help young people safely climb to the top. But to ensure no-one ever faces a broken ladder again, we need the Government to step up and make young people a priority.

Here are a couple of evidence-based solutions that could end youth homelessness for good:

Removing financial discrimination

When trying to climb up to decent employment and housing, young people find themselves entitled to a lower minimum wage, they receive less Universal Credit and are only eligible for shared housing allowance (which is less than what over 35s get).

We must stop assuming that all young people have a ‘bank of mum and dad’ to act as a harness, or that living in shared houses is safe and suitable for all.

When a young person becomes homeless due to financial pressures, such as we are currently facing in the cost-of-living crisis, they are not a priority in the Homelessness Reduction Act. So, their age means they are often blocked from getting homelessness support by local authorities. But with the existing discrimination to wages and housing benefits, it also means they can’t afford to live independently in their own homes.

We have to end financial discrimination and give young people fair wages, fair benefits and access decent financial support when they need it.

Creating the housing young people need

Let’s focus on creating the sort of housing that young people can benefit from. Because councils are so stretched, young people are usually not priority need for social housing, or even temporary accommodation. And on the rare occasion they are placed in temporary accommodation, it can be totally unsuitable.

Instead, charities are helping to fill some of this gap. They show how public, private, and voluntary sector partnerships can provide suitable, secure accommodation for young people that sustainably solves their homelessness.

We need these projects to be scaled up massively and available for all young people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

An example is St Basils who run a Live & Work Model accommodation project in the West Midlands for young people, to ensure they can safely climb up their ladder with rungs of housing and employment.

It looks like this:

  • St Basil’s Live & Work accommodation offers young people aged 18-25 the opportunity to access high-quality, low-cost stepping stone accommodation, which enables them to live and work, without the complexities of navigating the benefit system, for a settled period to save and extend their choice of next step accommodation.
  • Phase 1 which opened in 2015 comprised student style furnished flats at rents reduced to a level that enabled young apprentices to pay their rent and energy costs through their earned income. Since then, over 170 young people have lived in the scheme, all working and moving on when they have saved. None have claimed housing benefit.
  • Phase 2 has just finished providing a further 54 studio apartments for young workers at deflated rents.
  • The Live & Work accommodation is supportive rather than supported accommodation but St Basil’s on-site bespoke housing management staff will be on hand to provide guidance and to help them sustain their home.

“From St Basil’s perspective, the scheme extended our options for young people without family support, enabling them to benefit from similar opportunities to their contemporaries, who do have such support.

“In Phase 1, the young people were all overcoming difficult starts, some with multiple needs and all with the trauma of the underlying issues which lead to homelessness. None have returned as homeless.” St Basil’s CEO Jean Templeton.

This is just one example that shows that by making sure young people having living rents and living wages, we can help them safely climb their ladders.

Our campaign

Ending financial discrimination and expanding St Basil’s Live & Work model for housing are a couple of the vital solutions recommended by our campaign, #PlanForThe136k.

Our evidence-based strategy for ending youth homelessness is organised into three areas: prevention, housing and finance.

We are calling on political parties to adopt our strategy before the general election, so that the next Government is committed to making ending youth homelessness a priority.

You can get involved by signing and sharing our parliamentary petition calling for a cross-departmental strategy to end youth homelessness:

You can get involved by spreading awareness about the campaign and calling for the solutions within your party, with your colleagues in local councils and with your MP.

We can make it easier for young people to climb between childhood and adulthood. We can give them the support they need to thrive. We can prevent 136,000 young people becoming homeless. But we just need political will to do so.

Editor’s note: Anybody interested in this campaign can get in touch with Phil at [email protected]

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Tackling Temporary Accommodation: Labour Housing Group’s Recommendations

When we talk about homelessness, our thoughts often turn to people in doorways and tents, living on the streets of our towns and cities. Rough sleeping is the most extreme and dangerous form of homelessness and the increasing numbers experiencing it is easy to see. Shocking as this is, it is just the visible tip of the now vast homelessness crisis.

Earlier this month Hannah Keilloh set out both the human and financial cost of this hidden crisis. 123,000 homeless families are living in temporary accommodation (TA) including 140,000 children. More than £1.7 billion spent in 2022-23 to “temporarily” house people, often in appalling conditions.  Two thirds of the families have been in TA for more than a year, some for more than a decade – their lives on hold as they wait for the settled and secure home that everyone deserves.

There is an urgent need for action to tackle this and last summer I was pleased to join Labour Housing Group’s policy working group to help develop proposals we would like to see Labour’s manifesto.

The Group’s aims were to bring forward proposals to reduce the cost of temporary accommodation and to improve the quality of accommodation being used. But also to work towards a greater mission – to prevent people from becoming homelessness and, when that isn’t possible, to ensure that temporary accommodation is truly temporary and their homelessness ended as quickly as possible.

Strategy and leadership to enable change

Tackling homelessness requires consistent, coordinated action and commitment across multiple areas government – national, regional and local. It requires a true team effort with government and public agencies working hand in hand with housing and third sector support providers and communities.

Adopting an overarching homelessness strategy might not sound like the biggest ask, and yet the UK is one of the few nations in Europe that does not have one. The next government should swiftly correct this. It should be coproduced and delivered in partnership with people with lived experience of homelessness, and the local authorities and voluntary & community organisations working on the frontline. It won’t be easy to break the silos. Strong leadership will be needed to develop and deliver this across government – the report recommends the appointment of a homelessness Tsar, who will need political support at the very highest level.

At its heart, Labour’s approach should have an understanding that the causes and impacts of homelessness are diverse and unequal. Women make up 60% of adults in temporary accommodation with violent relationship breakdown as a leading cause.  Black people are three and a half times more likely to experience homelessness as White British people and a quarter of young people at risk of homelessness identify as LGBTQ+. Labour’s strategy must recognise disadvantage and discrimination. It must enable person centred and trauma informed approaches to meet diverse needs.

Low cost, high impact changes

Preventing homelessness and the need for temporary accommodation is our ultimate aim, but to alleviate the immediate TA crisis Labour must act swiftly to lower the barriers people face to moving on from TA, refuges and other homelessness accommodation. Too often people are stuck on social housing waiting lists and blocked from private rental tenancies. It is in many ways akin to bed blocking – people unable to move to somewhere more suitable and the “beds” in good quality, local accommodation unavailable for newly homeless people.

The report recommends that social housing allocation policies should give greater priority to people experiencing homelessness and that more housing association lettings should be reserved for people experiencing homelessness. The report particularly recommends that policies should far greater support to those who have spent more than a year in TA.

Action should also be taken to remove barriers from securing private rented accommodation. This should include increasing the budget and eligibility for Discretionary Housing Payments and enabling local authorities to expand of funding of deposits and rent in advance. Reforms should also require landlords and agents to accept offers of written guarantees (for instance from local authorities) instead of cash deposits.

Investing in the future

The working group recognises the financial and economic challenges a Labour government would face. However, there is strong evidence that investing to end homelessness is money well spent with PWC finding every £1 invested could save up to £2.80 of spending across the public sector.

We recommend a comprehensive, cross government review of current spending on supporting the homelessness crisis – both direct spend on TA and homelessness support and the hidden costs of homelessness including within health, social care and criminal justice budgets. Our proposals for investment include additional ring fenced funding for homelessness prevention, a local authority TA acquisitions programme and funding of a robust inspection and enforcement regime to ensure existing legal standards for TA are met.

Ultimately Labour must make it their mission to end poverty and destitution. That means investing to tackle the housing crisis by building at least 90,000 new social homes per year and, alongside the new deal for working people, fixing the gaping holes in the social welfare safety net.

With real determination and ambition we believe a Labour government could end the homelessness crisis and we urge Labour to take up this challenge.

Find out more

There will be an online launch for Labour Housing Group’s policy paper on temporary accommodation on Tuesday the 27th of February at 10am. Register for that here.

Click here to read the full report.

Fiona Colley is Director of Social Change at Homeless Link, the national membership body for organisations working directly with people who become homeless in England.

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Invest to save: essential for solving the temporary accommodation crisis, Labour Housing Group says

Why Labour Housing Group’s invest to save  approach is needed to resolve the temporary accommodation crisis

A safe, stable, and decent home is a foundational building block for life. Home is our space away from the rest of the world where we can relax and feel secure.  However, in England, 140,000 children head into 2024 living not in a ‘home’ at all, but instead living in temporary accommodation (TA). 

To put it in context that’s the equivalent of over 4,600 classes of children, or 220 entire primary schools. Or the entire population of Watford! The numbers are huge, and they are only going up (this figure was a 14 per cent increase on the previous year). Behind every number is a child and a family.  Some will stay there a few days but more often stays in TA last months and even years. Almost certainly their TA will be overcrowded and all too often it will be of poor quality.  

The reality of this situation is often children having to share beds with siblings or parents and babies with no safe sleeping space at all. Young children with no safe place to play, and older children with nowhere to do their homework. Children are getting to school tired and late having travelled long distances to their schools (having often been placed out of area). Parents losing their jobs because the length of commute to work is now impossible.  Stressed-out parents struggling to feed their children decent meals without any suitable cooking facilities. Families are living in limbo and moving frequently, with constant uncertainty and insecurity.

TA is a broad term and can include B&Bs, hostels, hotels, private rented houses or flats, and council or housing association properties. TA has an important role to play in emergencies: providing short-term housing until settled accommodation can be secured. However, this is where things have come seriously unstuck.  A chronic shortage of new social housing under successive governments, rapidly rising private rents, a local housing allowance that has failed to consistently keep pace with inflation, all coupled with a cost of living crisis, means more and more households are finding themselves forced into homelessness and ending up in TA.  

The reasons for ending up in TA are the same reasons that people find themselves stuck there for increasingly long periods – there is nowhere affordable or suitable to move people onto. Data from Shelter in 2022 revealed two-thirds of families living in TA have been there for more than 12 months, and this rises to more than four-fifths in London. Some families have been living in TA for more than 10 years. Ten years – this means some children have only ever lived in temporary accommodation never knowing or having the security of a fixed home.

This is no longer a temporary housing solution; it is becoming an unofficial tenure in itself.

Whilst very difficult for the families affected, TA is also very challenging for local authorities.  As we see more and more councils teetering on the brink of Section 114 notices, recent figures released by DLUHC show that from April 2022-March 2023 £1.74 billion was spent by councils on temporary accommodation.  In some cases, councils are using between one fifth and one half of their total available financial resources on it.  This is unsustainable but it doesn’t have to be this way. 

In summer 2023 Labour Housing Group set up a working group to look at the issue of families in TA.  After consulting with the wider housing and homelessness sector, the group has now produced a working paper with a framework of essential actions for the next Labour government. With the situation growing worse by the day, the premise of the framework is to ensure that TA is a priority for the first 100 days of a new administration. 

Solving this crisis and releasing people from the grips of TA will require a long-term ‘invest to save’ approach.

There will be an online launch for Labour Housing Group’s policy paper on temporary accommodation on Tuesday the 27th of February at 10am. Register for that here.

Read a summary of the report here, and click here for the full report.

Hannah Keilloh is an experienced Policy and Practice Officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing, specialising in homelessness, domestic abuse, and planning.

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Making the Moral Argument for Housing

Let’s start with first principles: housing is a fundamental human right. A right so central, so  fundamental, that it intersects with all others. An inalienable and essential need enshrined in  moral and natural law – though not yet in the statute books. Without it, all else suffers;  educational outcomes fall, inequality worsens, psychological and physical health  deteriorates, and human potential is capped and even drained. As Hashi Mohamed  beautifully puts in his book A Home of One’s Own, having secure and dignified housing  “allows the mind and soul to wander to more important matters; the growth of one’s  personality, the ability to dream and desire.”1It is the basic human need for shelter, without  which all other needs cannot be meaningfully met. 

We have all seen the figures that illustrate the scale of the problem. Over 100,000  households now in temporary accommodation, 64,940 of those with children. As of the start  of 2023, over 1.2 million households on local authority waiting lists, the true numbers of  those in need likely far higher. And underlying these statistics, the daily human tragedies that  flow endlessly from the national emergency that is the housing crisis. 

As a councillor in an inner-city London borough I have come face-to-face with the  desperation and devastation faced by those in desperate need, as well as the uncertainty  and anxiety of young people with no hope of laying down roots. Like many of us, I have also  personally faced the soul-destroying horror of housing insecurity and eviction – and the  displacement that comes with it. 

If we accept the truly destructive nature of the housing crisis across all metrics, and accept  that housing is a human right, the next question surely must be: will we do whatever is  necessary to fix it? Not for the sake of it, but because this is a matter of social and moral  justice. Holding our principles front of mind and recognising that the housing crisis is not just  a headline, we have no choice but to be bolder. Put simply, we as a Labour movement have  an ethical, not just practical, duty to be fearless in our efforts. 

Firstly, we have to slay some common myths on the progressive side of politics, namely that  we can fix the housing crisis simply by filling vacant homes (whether they belong to overseas  investors or not) and by building solely on brownfield sites in existing urban centres. I know  why these are common arguments – I understand why they are attractive fantasies. We care  deeply about inequality and reject the commodification of housing, recognising the  unsustainability and immorality of the notion of homes lying vacant during a housing crisis,  and we embrace our role as custodians of the environment, preferring to limit the impact of  human existence on nature

But as is often the case, these fantasies are the waking dreams that risk distracting us from  the real work required. The facts are sobering. The UK has the lowest long-term vacancy  rate in Europe, bar Poland, at just 1.1% of the total housing stock– a mere drop in the water. Building to full capacity on all the brownfield sites in the entire country would only  deliver 31% of the homes needed– a significant, but ultimately inadequate, amount. 

While no option should be taken off the table, it is clear these approaches taken in isolation  are not enough. Facing an estimated 4.3 million home deficit, only more radical, progressive  solutions will end the injustice and suffering faced by so many. 

Take the Green Belt, imagined by many as a noble, pristine ring embracing our cities while  in fact acting as a semi-industrial chokehold throttling supply. Here we have an opportunity  to make a radical, and observably true, argument – the Green Belt isn’t really green at all,  and has very little to do with the environment. It does not exist to preserve England’s green  and pleasant land but to restrict urban growth, and is already largely built upon with light  industry and low-density housing. It is estimated we could fill the entire 4.3 million home gap  by just building densely on under 6% of the Green Belt, if taken as the only solution.  Counter-intuitively, this would then have the effect of limiting urban sprawl and allowing us to  preserve and re-wild our actual natural landscapes. 

Or we can look to the related work of architect Russell Curtis, whose research has  concluded that we could provide 1.2 million homes by building solely around rural train  stations, where the transport infrastructure already exists. The knock-on benefits of this for  the economy and reducing reliance on cars are obvious, and would also require less new  infrastructure to be built. 

No argument about solving the housing crisis and fixing supply should ignore the need for  wider planning reform, though, beyond re-designation of the Green Belt and other measures – as long as our planning regime operates on a case-by-case, discretionary model, as laid  out in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, achieving the levels of supply required may  be prohibitively difficult. Our approach should therefore include a recognition of the need to  overhaul the system as it currently stands and embrace the radicalism that makes us  Labour: when systems are no longer fit for purpose, we build new ones. 

When those outside the Labour movement, or our political opponents, make similar  arguments about acting boldly to fix the housing crisis, they make them largely on the basis  of practical and economic necessity. Our movement has the opportunity, and the  responsibility, to make them with the moral necessity in mind and, while we do not have a  monopoly on morality, we must remember the reason we exist – to redress these injustices. 

It is why the Labour Housing Group and Labour Campaign for Human Rights came together  to clearly say “Housing is a Human Right”, bringing together housing and human rights  practitioners, and why our conference motion calls for housing to be front and centre of the  party’s campaigns. 

The housing crisis is a catastrophe affecting all strata of society; young people forced into  HMOs and limiting environments well into their 30s, unable to flourish as they wish, millions  more of all ages and backgrounds in insecure and undignified housing up and down the  country, not to speak of the thousands experiencing street homelessness.

Failure to fix this problem – and failure to make this argument persuasively – is therefore a  moral failure. The recognition that we must do whatever it takes to end the housing crisis  should be at the front and centre of every debate, every political conversation, and every  policy consideration: not simply to boost economic growth, or to attract younger voters, but  because it is the right thing to do.

Omid Miri

Omid Miri has been a Councillor in Hammersmith & Fulham, and Chair of the Planning Committee, since May 2022. He is passionate about tackling the housing crisis and campaigning for housing as a human right, and particularly interested in re-prioritising social and council housing as a form of tenure.

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What does the Queen’s Speech mean for housing?

Despite presenting a large volume of legislation, overall the policy proposals in the Queen’s Speech will do very little to address the underlying causes of our country’s housing crisis.  Labour Housing Group has long argued for systemic change in the supply of genuinely affordable housing (the planning system and housing finance), reform of the benefits system, and regulation of the private rented sector and is campaigning for housing to be set in legislation as a human right. 

The legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech will not address the challenge of a desperate shortage of genuinely affordable homes, the poor quality and energy inefficiency of all housing stock or the growing problems of homelessness and temporary accommodation.  The legislative programme does not bring forward ideas for the failing social security system which is leaving families having to choose between heating and eating.  I have set out the outline of what is expected in each of the Bills and then highlighted what’s missing.

The Renters Reform Bill is expected to abolish ‘no-fault’ evictions by removing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.  We have heard this before and we must hold this Government to their promise to now deliver this.  The Bill also proposes to reform possession grounds for landlords – it is not clear what these will be or how the Bill will tackle the issues with administration of evictions.

The proposal for a legally binding Decent Homes Standard in the Private Rented Sector is certainly welcome but currently lacks detail for how this will be enforced, how the enforcement will be funded and how the works to ensure the Decent Homes Standard will be administered or paid for. Similarly, the introduction of a new Ombudsman for private landlords to resolve disputes could be a positive step forward but experience from the Housing Ombudsman, under-resourced and under-powered and struggling to keep up with the flow of escalated complaints from social landlords, suggests that unless this is properly funded this will create more uncertainty for renters.

The Social Housing Regulation Bill attempts to give more focus on consumer standards. With plans to enable the Regulator to intervene with landlords who are performing poorly on consumer issues there is hope for the many residents who struggle to secure a decent level of repair service from their landlord.  This is a u-turn from the Coalition Government’s abolition  of the Tenants Services Authority in 2010.  The impact of this Bill will only really be felt by tenants once the new powers and functions come through the Social Housing Regulator. Labour Housing Group will work with Labour MPs to make the case that the Social Housing Regulator is properly funded to deliver this expanded role. 

Enabling the Regulator to inspect landlords is encouraging – the tenants that I represent who receive a poor repairs service would welcome the chance to call for an inspection and to see the outcome of that inspection. This Bill still has gaps.  There is no stated role for Local Authorities or Local Councillors who are often the first to hear about the impact of poor consumer standards.

It is also silent on the role of local authorities with housing association disposals – local authorities have a responsibility to assess housing needs for their local areas and planning powers to secure affordable homes but there is no requirement for housing associations or the Social Housing Regulator to consult local authorities on the impact of disposals. Finally, this Bill is a missed opportunity to invest in tenant engagement including a requirement for tenants to be on Housing Association Boards or to have a say on local management decisions.

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill promises mostly administrative changes to monitoring levelling up, alongside tinkering at the edges of the planning system. Anyone committed to seeing more affordable homes built will despair at the lack of ambition from this Bill. The idea of organising votes on a street by street basis to determine planning applications will just bring in unnecessary bureaucracy to an under-resourced planning system.

The focus should have been on supporting clear policies which prioritise affordable homes and high-quality design standards.  We await the detail on how the Bill will support local authorities to bring empty premises back into use and support the high street – currently local authorities have broad powers to support regeneration and so it’s difficult to see what more will be added which would have a meaningful impact.

It is positive that the Energy Security Bill proposes to appoint Ofgem as the new regulator for heat networks. I represent residents in new build homes who have no control over their energy prices and no powers to demand transparency over costs or choice of provider.  The appointment should go further and provide clear local involvement for consumers so that they have a say in their energy provider. There is a huge gap in making plans to insulate and retrofit existing homes so that they are more energy efficient.  Only a street by street, block by block programme, with sustained investment from national Government will secure the reduction in energy use that is needed to get to Net Zero.

It’s clear what’s missing from this legislative programme.  The Government has failed to address the issue of short term lets, which is eroding the availability of affordable homes across the country, particularly in London and areas with a growing tourist economy.  The Government’s failure to really grasp this issue and tackle the impact on housing supply and on communities lets down both homeless families and those hoping to join the housing ladder. 

It is unsustainable for short term lets platforms to continue operating in central London without further regulation.  There is a gap where there should be a long term commitment to investment in genuinely affordable council and social housing.  This should be delivered through Government co-ordination of major new housing schemes alongside a sustained funding stream.

Going forward, Labour Housing Group will work with the Labour front bench and Labour MPs to make the case for the strongest possible action within these Bills to address the housing crisis.

<strong>Rachel Blake</strong>
Rachel Blake

Rachel is a Labour and Co-operative Party Councillor in Bow East and is Vice-Chair of the Labour Housing Group.

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How do we reset the housing market?

England’s housing system has failed. We need to press the reset button on housing – let’s start with planning.

Rampant house price inflation. Hundreds of thousands of people trapped in unsafe buildings. Tens of thousands of families made homeless during a global pandemic. Our housing system is broken.

You would think given the state of things, that fundamental reform of housing would be top of the political agenda and an obvious vote winner. Yet this isn’t the case and we’ve seen no substantive policy action in decades, with the supply of new homes per year now well below the housebuilding highs of the  1960s and 1970s. Despite being badly needed, the popularity of the ‘not in my backyard’ mantra has made housing reform politically untenable, with devastating consequences.

This problem is most obvious at the local level. While many voters are often sympathetic to the problems of housing affordability and homelessness, they too often oppose the construction of new homes, including affordable homes. Building more homes would help tackle such problems by directly increasing the supply of affordable homes and expanding the number of housing options available to people more generally.

England’s housing crisis is a product of multiple local housing crises. In many of the areas where opposition to new homes is strongest, affordability problems are often the worst. Of course, the ramifications of this crisis are not felt equally. It is often the younger and less well-off residents who are eventually priced out of their own communities.

Building more and better homes is not a panacea. But we must acknowledge it is part of the solution. As Geoff Meen, one of the UK’s foremost housing experts has pointed out, it’s ‘perfectly possible for there to be both an absolute shortage of homes and a distribution problem’. In essence, we are not building enough homes in England, and we do not have the right policies to create more sustainable credit conditions or ensure fair access to housing for people on all incomes.

Once we acknowledge that building more homes is part of the solution, then the next question we must answer is ‘how do we build more’? Part of the answer lies in the way we deliver homes through England’s planning system. While the government’s proposed reforms aren’t flawless, they do present a vision. Significant questions about what these reforms could mean for the delivery of affordable housing persist and they certainly don’t go far enough in tackling high land values.

The answer to these weaknesses is better reforms, not no reforms. We must imagine a better alternative to our current planning system if we are to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis.

To show their credibility on housing issues, political parties must better sell a vision for a planning system that delivers the homes we need and in doing so, stops people from being priced out of their communities. That requires putting aside the short-term gains of winning immediate votes by objecting to local development and instead explaining why we need to build more homes in this country. Making the case for more homes nationally while opposing them in their backyard reduces the credibility of any national message politicians might have on housing.

The widespread opposition to the government’s planning reforms suggest that they were dead on arrival. That is not a reason to abandon attempts to address the housing crisis. At the moment, our planning system reinforces England’s broken housing market because land that obtains planning permission increases exponentially in value. This makes it increasingly difficult to build homes at affordable prices. Despite this, suitable policy solutions such as the introduction of zoning policy find few advocates and instead, the dysfunctional status quo persists.

We need to build a new consensus on housing. It is time to move beyond the short-term gains and quick wins that come from opposing new homes. Instead, politicians must present a bold and radical vision for how they will address England’s housing crisis. Now is the time for radical and ambitious vision that would improve the supply of high-quality and affordable homes, while also tackling the unfair distribution of homes.  The myriad of problems facing the housing market – from the building safety crisis to rampant unaffordability – will only get worse without action to deliver better quality and more affordable homes.

The longer the housing crisis goes unfixed, the more damage it does. Progressives must not fall into the trap of opposition for opposition’s sake. Instead, they should articulate a clear vision that that explains why the housing market is broken, why we need radical action to fix things and how a fairer society can be created if we get things right. 

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Jonathan Webb</span></strong>
Jonathan Webb

Jonathan Webb is a Senior Research Fellow at IPPR North. He tweets @jrkwebb.

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It is time to end the national scandal of veterans without homes

In the UK today, there are around 320,000 people without a home.

Homelessness comes in many different forms; some people are sleeping rough on the streets while others may be staying on friends’ sofas or staying in a hostel long-term.

Of those without a home, 6000 are men and women who served this country as a member of our armed forces, only to find themselves experiencing some form of homelessness.

The reasons for this are complex, often stemming in a difficulty in adapting to civilian life after years spent with a strict regimented lifestyle.

We know that veterans are disproportionately likely to be impacted by a wide range of challenging and often intersecting issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, drug and/or alcohol misuse, depression and other mental health problems.

These, coupled a difficulty in entering the civilian jobs market are major factors that go some way to explaining veteran homelessness.

Even before the pandemic struck, many veterans were slipping through the net or finding themselves without any form of support. They are often unable to be supported by mainstream homelessness charities not equipped to meet their needs, thus turn to often cash-strapped local councils.

We often think of our armed forces as protecting us from external threats, keeping us safe and secure from those who wish to harm us or our way of life.

Yet as if we needed reminding any more, the Coronavirus pandemic has shown that our armed forces keep us safe in so many more ways than we can even imagine.

It was the armed forces that were deployed to test people at the start of the crisis, who ensured that vital supply chains kept running and who are helping to secure the effective roll-out of the vaccine.

At Community’s biennial delegate conference in 2019, members of the union came together to decide our priorities for the year ahead. Delegates took the decision that ending veteran homelessness should be a priority campaign for us going forward.

We wanted to support those who have given so much to us as a country. We ran, walked and cycled to raise money for a local charity to help end veteran homelessness and between us we raised over £6,000.

We created a bespoke learning and training offer for veterans to improve their employability, and we successfully managed to change Labour Party policy. Our members up and down the country have been collecting warm winter clothes, toiletries and other necessities to support veterans.

We will never be able to thank the servicemen and women who have served us at home and overseas fully. However, the very least we can do is ensure that they have a roof over their head and a bed to sleep in at night.

One way we can all work to end veteran homelessness is to encourage more organisations to sign up to the Armed Forces Covenant. The Covenant is a promise by the employers to ensure that those who serve or who have served in the armed forces, and their families, have equal opportunities including at work, and when applying for jobs.

The government have a key role to play too and they must not miss the opportunity presented by the Armed Forces Bill. They should use the Bill to set measurable, national standards and empower local authorities to deliver including by providing ring fenced funding to councils for specialised mental health and substance misuse support services.

Every government and every political party talk a big game when it comes to supporting our armed forces. Now is the time to deliver, and the time to end this national scandal once and for all.

Melantha Chittenden
Melantha Chittenden

Melantha Chittenden is Head of Communications and Media at Community trade union and leads on the unions priority campaign on ending veteran homelessness. 

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Ending rough sleeping needs more than a sticking plaster

In December, I gave evidence to the MHCLG select committee about the impact of Covid-19 on rough sleeping.  My message to them was we desperately need investment in front line housing advice and long-term funding for genuinely affordable housing to really tackle the complex causes of rough sleeping. The pandemic has shown is what is politically possible, but short-term sticking plasters really need to become longer term solutions – and now is the time to make that case to the Government.

At the start of the lockdown councils were told by the government to do ‘whatever it takes’ to support our communities. One of the actions we took was to quickly house rough sleepers. Prior to the pandemic hitting rough sleeping had been steadily increasing after a decade of austerity, having been all but eliminated under the last Labour government.

The ‘Everyone In’ initiative made local authorities responsible for housing rough sleepers and those at risk of rough sleeping. This was regardless of priority need, local connection or recourse to public funds. 

We stepped up to the challenge in Tower Hamlets, the borough I represent. Around 260 individuals either rough sleeping on the streets, or at imminent risk of rough sleeping, were given emergency accommodation. 49 of this group had No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). We placed entrenched rough sleepers into newly procured commercial hotels and emergency B&B accommodation. Statistics are one thing but each number represents a life transformed and having a roof over your head unlocks access to so many other services and life chances.

Now we face a situation of uncertainty about future funding to support this cohort of people. While the Government has called for councils to come up with a plan on how to move rough sleepers on to the next stage of accommodation, we have again stepped up, but we need funding to back us all the way.

The Next Steps Accommodation Programme, a £400m national fund, offers some help but the costs we face are substantial. Housing benefit claims won’t cover the cost of the support for a group with complex needs.  Ongoing announcements about additional funding streams create pressure on already under resourced teams to write ‘bids’ and applications for resources for projects that are so clearly needed. This relationship between local and national Government is breaking and needs urgently fixing.

Now we are in a further lockdown, with high levels of Covid cases and temperatures plummeting, we need the Government to make suitable provision. On a practical level normal provision such as hubs will not work as self-contained units are still required. If the Government does not get this right it will lead to an increase in infections. A decade of austerity has shown that if you simply turn off the funding taps in one area it leads to further pressures on other public services with longer term impacts on other services like the NHS.

It’s taken a time of crisis for the Government to step in and give councils the funding they need to tackle rough sleeping and they desperately need to address the long-term undersupply of genuinely affordable housing. If something good can come out of the pandemic, it’s eradicating rough sleeping. The Government has a real chance to not undo the progress we have made.

<strong><span class="uppercase"><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Rachel Blake</span></span></strong>
Rachel Blake

Rachel is the Deputy Mayor for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. She was elected to represent the Labour Party for Bow East Ward in May 2014 and appointed to Cabinet in July 2015.

Rachel has held Cabinet Member roles for Regeneration, Planning, and Air Quality. Rachel is now the Cabinet Member for Adults, Health and Well-being.

She has previously been called in as an expert witness to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on its inquiry into the long-term delivery of social and affordable rented housing.

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