“I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction: to end rough sleeping in our country.”
Andy Burnham’s first speech as Prime Minister set out his ambition to tackle one of the greatest injustices in our society. But why did he do it? Why rough sleeping, why now, and why should this agenda be a priority for the Prime Minister?
Because ending rough sleeping will rebuild hope
Across England, nearly 300,000 households are experiencing the most severe forms of homelessness. This includes people sleeping rough, staying in unsuitable temporary accommodation, living in hostels or refuges, sofa surfing, or sleeping in places not intended for habitation. More than 176,000 children are growing up in Temporary Accommodation. All of these numbers are at record highs.
Rough sleeping is only a small proportion of this broader crisis: best estimates suggest around 4,800 people sleep rough on a single night in England, and around 15,000 people sleep rough at some point over a year. Of all forms of homelessness, people sleeping rough are at greatest risk of severe harm, including rapid deterioration in physical and mental health, exposure to violence and abuse, loss of employment prospects, and premature death.
Public polling consistently finds overwhelming agreement that nobody should have to sleep rough, across supporters of all political parties. Recently, visible rough sleeping has also become a major test of people’s confidence in government and public services: when the public sees the same people sleeping outside supermarkets, railway stations and high streets night after night – often suffering from deteriorating health – it feeds a sense that ‘the system doesn’t work’. Every day, thousands of people stop to offer food, water, money or simply a conversation because they cannot bear to walk past someone sleeping on the streets – but beyond these everyday acts of kindness, they have no meaningful way to help someone leave rough sleeping for good.
Ending rough sleeping will not end homelessness, but it is the clearest and most visible place to start. Making a difference here will demonstrate that government can solve problems and strengthen communities, and will start to restore confidence in public services and hope that things can get better – that we can be better, as a country. While the barriers to supporting people out of rough sleeping should not be underestimated, with focus and dedication meaningful change is possible.
Because rough sleeping is socially and fiscally destructive
Beyond the hugely damaging consequences for individual people, rough sleeping also comes with enormous fiscal costs for local and central government through additional pressures on the NHS, police and other public services. Analysis from the charity Crisis shows that a year of rough sleeping costs an estimated £20,128 per person, versus £1,426 for a successful prevention intervention.
In the absence of joined-up public policy to prevent and solve homelessness, an expensive ‘homelessness management industry’ has built up, weighing heavily on both the benefits system and local authority General Funds. To take one example, supported housing – where care and support services are provided alongside homes – must be a crucial part of any strategy to prevent and resolve rough sleeping. But as funding for publicly controlled provision has dried up, an exploitative ‘exempt accommodation’ subsector has filled the gap, with bad faith actors attracted by the higher housing benefits rates allowed for supported housing compared to standard social or private tenancies.
The housing Select Committee has described the system as a ‘complete mess’. An absence of regulation has led to some extremely poor quality provision and truly abhorrent treatment of residents, so that too often the safety net needed to prevent people falling into rough sleeping in the first place simply isn’t there.
When the supported housing safety net fails, more people enter rough sleeping and find it harder to exit, leaving them with no option but to sleep on the streets and in shop doorways. Beyond the horrific consequences for individuals, this affects nearby residents, local businesses and everyone who wants safe, welcoming town centres.
Because Number 10 can drive solutions across government
The reasons for a national mission to end rough sleeping are clear. The other side of the ledger is that Andy Burnham believes it can be achieved. This is partly based on his experience of driving Greater Manchester’s A Bed Every Night programme to provide a safe place to stay for anyone sleeping rough or at imminent risk of doing so. This hasn’t ended rough sleeping in Manchester, but it provides crucial lessons for how local and regional government can work together to coordinate provision – and about the limits of what can be done without changes to policy at the national level.
Crisis, Homeless Link and homelessness organisations across the country have spent years building the evidence base and practical expertise needed to prevent rough sleeping and help people leave the streets for good. Frontline services know a great deal about what works. The opportunity now is to combine that expertise with something the sector cannot provide itself: the convening power of Number 10, action across Whitehall and the resources of the state.
Crucially, many of the drivers of new rough sleeping are directly controlled by government. Above all, there is no justification for people to end up on the streets when they leave institutions like prisons, hospitals, psychiatric units, the care system, Home Office accommodation, and sometimes the armed forces. Official data shows prison leavers are by far the largest institutional route into rough sleeping, and that those who fall into rough sleeping have a substantially higher likelihood of reoffending. Allowing this situation to continue is in no one’s interest.
But with responsibility for these drivers split across multiple government departments, progress must be led from the very top. Andy Burnham and his team can provide the leadership, momentum and cross-government co-ordination to overcome departmental silos, allowing mayors and local leaders to build on the early success of A Bed Every Night in Manchester.
Because housing policy is about people, not ‘units’
Beyond all this, Andy’s national mission offers an opportunity to put a clearer human purpose at the heart of Labour’s housing policy. We rightly talk about the homes we need to build and the targets required to deliver them. But ultimately, housing policy is not about ‘units’. It is about whether people have somewhere safe, secure and affordable to call home.
Ending rough sleeping is far from the whole solution. But it’s a great place to start.
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