Can Labour really end homelessness?

Homelessness charities work hard over Christmas, but only the government can do the work on housing, incomes and services that is required to help people without a safe and secure place to call home, writes St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity CEO Duncan Shrubsole

Winter is here and Christmas upon us. Thoughts at this time often turn to what it must be like to be homeless. My own first engagement with homelessness was volunteering at a shelter over Christmas, and the homelessness charity I now run is very grateful to all those motivated to give over the festive period.

Yet far too many people are facing Christmas without a safe and secure place to call home. Across England, rough sleeping is two-and-a-half times higher than in 2010, and a record 13,000 people were seen on the streets of London last year.

Out of sight, some 360,000 households approached their local authority for help with homelessness last year, record numbers are in temporary accommodation (130,000 households, including more than 170,000 children), and thousands more people are in hostels or getting by on friends’ floors. Those working on the homelessness frontline told me earlier this year that 85 per cent of them were seeing demand for their services rise and that 80 per cent expected it to get worse.

Each statistic is a real life set back, harmed, potential unfulfilled. Homelessness also has an economic cost, with local authorities across the country reliant on ever more expensive temporary accommodation, and then having to cut the services that could prevent homelessness to pay those bills – a clear false economy.

A year-and-a-half in, ministers finally unwrapped their strategy for doing something about it. The government this month committed in its manifesto to work across government to end all forms of homelessness. But is it up to the scale of the challenge?

‘Each statistic is a real life set back, harmed, potential unfulfilled’ (PA)

The government’s strategy starts with a recognition from the secretary of state Steve Reed that “a good life, based on an affordable, secure and stable home, should be available to everyone in this country”. It commits to prioritising prevention, recognising the best solution to homelessness is it not occurring in the first place. And says action is needed across central and local government, public services, mayors and the voluntary sector.

It rightly identifies a lack of housing and income are root causes of homelessness, so the government’s recent commitment to end the two-child benefit limit and to build more social housing is welcome and should help, if it can be built fast enough.

The strategy includes specific targets to halve the number living long-term on the streets by the end of the parliament, to end the placement of families in B&Bs and stop people having to sleep rough in the first place to get help. Some additional funding has been made available, but it may well not be enough.

And the ambition should be to go further and faster – the last Labour government reduced rough sleeping by two thirds and halved the use of temporary accommodation. During Covid, a concerted effort brought record numbers of people inside and off the streets.

We should will the means to achieve such progress again. Any strategy is only ever as good as its implementation. It has long been a scandal that people can be discharged from prisons and hospitals and end up homeless, and so it’s welcome the government is committing to tackling this.

But the strategy also has gaps. Private tenancies ending has become a leading cause of homelessness. The Renters’ Rights Act helps, but without the ability to pay the rising rents landlords demand, people will still fall out of or not be able to move into private renting. Yet, in the Budget, the chancellor kept housing benefit rates frozen, effectively dragging more people into poverty.

The government must look at this again and link benefits to actual rent levels. Similarly, we need to ensure services and charities have the right long-term funding so they can develop and maintain the responses that homeless people tell us they need, and recruit, support, pay and retain the skilled and experienced staff to deliver them.

Homelessness is a problem made in the UK facing those born and living here, but the changes the Home Office is making to the rights and support that migrants and those seeking asylum will be entitled to will directly increase their vulnerability to destitution and homelessness.

Homelessness charities, large and small, will continue to work our hardest this Christmas and every day, but only government can do the heavy lifting on housing, incomes and services that is required. A strategy is a good start, but tackling homelessness will need to be a clear and consistent political and policy priority for years to come.

St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity works year-round and across the UK to help individuals into homes, support vital frontline workers and to test and share new solutions to homelessness smitfc.org