On The Street

The government has a glorious vision that they will end rough sleeping, a praiseworthy aim that no-one can in good conscience take issue with. The Prime Minister, no less, states in the introduction to their new vision document that,

It is an affront to this country that last winter, one of the coldest on record, there were people still sleeping rough on our streets. While the temperature dropped below freezing, many were making do with doorways and cardboard boxes for beds. In a civilised society, this is totally unacceptable.

How right you are, Mr. Cameron! Moreover, he goes on to say that,

...tackling rough sleeping is not just about providing homes. It is about dealing with the wider causes of homelessness, from family breakdown and mental illness to drug addiction and alcoholism. This is a complex, multi-faceted problem.

Again, very true and reassuring to hear that at the highest level the government understand the complicated nature of the problem. If only this understanding was matched with some idea of the solutions. Set out in the vision document are six cross-departmental commitments to end homelessness. Before I get to them, here are seven actions the government is taking or has taken that are directly relevant to the number of people without homes. None of these are mentioned in the vision document:

1. Radically altering the nature of social housing tenure. Currently mean weekly rent in the social rented sector is £75, less than half the private sector level of £156. The government is introducing a new tenure called 'affordable rent', which by default will be set at 80% of private rent (although theoretically there will be flexibility to set it lower). New and moving tenants will be presented with this exciting new tenure, plus existing tenants may be encouraged to switch. 'Affordable rent' tenancies will also be fixed term by default; currently social renting offers a tenancy for life or until the tenant no longer wants it. All this amounts to making social renting much more expensive and less secure.
   
   
2. Cutting housing benefit in a number of ways (including capping, indexing to a measure of inflation that doesn't including housing costs, and calculating local housing allowance with reference to the cheapest 30% of properties rather than 50%), such that it won't be enough to cover either 'affordable rent' or private rent in many places. This is expected to reduce the government's spending on housing benefit by £1.8 billion. The Chartered Institute of Housing calculated that the changes could price private tenants on housing benefit out of, well, Britain.
   
   
3. Weakening the duty on Local Authorities to help the homeless. Currently if you are homeless and ask your Local Authority for help, they can offer you private rented accommodation but you do not have to accept it. Under the Localism Bill proposals, if you did not accept the private rented option, the Local Authority wouldn't have to help you any further. The devil is in the detail here; how suitable does the offer need to be? What if it is too far from your job, or your child's school? Private rental is also insecure, with assured shorthold tenancies rarely lasting beyond 6 months, prone to volatile rent, and of poorer quality than other tenures.
   
   
4. Cutting Local Authority funding, which impacts both on housing departments and on charities that rely on public sector grants, which form between them the front line of help for the homeless.
   
   
5. Reforming the planning system through the Localism Bill, to remove regional housing targets and introduce confusing new ways of involving neighbourhoods (whatever they turn out to me). The Chief Executive of Taylor Wimpey, one of the UK's biggest house builders, said this of the proposals:
   
   ...can I tell you my great fear? In three years’ time, it all stops. We are operating currently on existing consent and on land banks. We need a flow of consent coming through the process to maintain and grow business. I fear that we will reach a point, in about three years’ time, when what we have currently on the stocks runs out, where in fact we have not got that supply coming through. That is the big challenge. That is the sort of transition [...] which so badly needs to be addressed.
   
   House builders obviously have a bit of a vested interest here, but he also has a good point. There is a shortage of housing in the UK and uncertainty about the planning system will only delay the building of anything.
   
   
6. Cutting the National Affordable Homes Programme from £8.4 billion (2008-11) to £4.5 billion (2010-13, notice the overlap) and stating that it will only be spent on the new 'affordable rent' tenure. This housing will not meet the needs of the most vulnerable and impoverished people, by definition those who are most at risk of homelessness.
   
   
7. Rejecting the conclusions of the Rugg Review, which called for regulation of the private rented section to deal with abusive landlords and substandard accommodation. The review proposed a light-touch system of regulation designed to stabilise the sector and encourage investment. The sector was supportive, but the government labelled it red tape and that was that.

As a result of this combination of policies, affordable housing will become scarcer, private renting remain insecure, social and private rents will rise, and housing benefit will reduce, whilst the Local Authority safety net weakens. The implications are worrying, and the Department of Communities and Local Government is well aware of it. The six-month-old letter recently leaked baldly states that just the changes to benefits will generate more than £270 million of additional costs to Local Authorities and cause 40,000 households to become homeless.

Wait a moment, didn't the Prime Minister say he really wanted to end rough sleeping? Let's look at the government's six commitments to do so.

1. 'Helping people off the streets' by providing £20 million for a Homelessness Transition Fund. If that much money could end homelessness, surely there would be no-one sleeping rough at the moment. It will go to Homeless Link,a body representing organisations that work with the homeless and be spent on grants to pilot new ways of working.
   
   
2. 'Helping people access healthcare' by, well, I can't really tell. The verbs used are 'highlight', 'support', and 'work with'. I've used such phraseology before and know what they equate to - very little. The government is trying to devolve healthcare commissioning to the local level, so how can they ensure the health needs of the homeless are fully met in every locality?
   
   
3. 'Helping people into work' by using the Work Programme. However effective the new private-sector led approach might be, it will be impeded by the fact that there are currently 2.6 million more unskilled workers than jobs. If there aren't enough private sector jobs, what then?
   
   
4. 'Reducing bureaucratic burdens' by reducing guidance and local authority reporting requirements. I genuinely don't understand how this will this tackle homelessness. Ironically, it might make it harder to calculate the level of homelessness nationally. Notably, there's also no mention in the report of how CLG will even monitor whether their pledge is being met.
   
   
5. 'Increasing local control over investment in services' by analysing the costs of homelessness. That one just sounds like a non sequetur. Community-based budgets are also referenced, but it seems quite a heroic assumption that giving the community greater control over Local Authority money will automatically result in better services for the homeless. The government has also removed the ringfence on homelessness grant, leaving Local Authorities free to spend it on whatever their councillors might choose. Call me unduly cynical, but the homeless are not a big local election voting demographic. It's worthy of note that taking away the ringfence on the Supporting People budget (which also assists the vulnerable) has resulted in it being dramatically cut by many Local Authorities.
   
   
6. 'Devolving responsibility for tackling homelessness' by giving the Mayor of London unspecified new responsibilities and £34 million to try and cushion the seismic impact benefit changes will have in London.
   

That final so-called commitment is the real key to this. The government has made a grand statement about ending rough sleeping, something that no government has managed even in times of economic growth and increasing public spending, then dumped the responsibility for actually doing it onto Local Authorities. Whilst making unprecedented cuts to their budgets. Nice work, Mr. Shapps. Is it really credible to presume the measures that form this vision will more-than-counterbalance the huge negative effects of other policies?

The above might give you the idea that I am doubtful that rough sleeping will cease to exist over the next four years. Meanwhile, the Mayor of London has pledged to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2012. According to figures from the charity Crisis, 3975 people slept rough at some point in London during 2010/11, an increase of 8 per cent on the previous year's total of 3673 and of more than a thousand since 2005/06. The cuts to housing benefit have yet to be implemented. Five and a half months to go, Boris. Good luck.

Actually ending rough sleeping would be a strikingly impressive thing to do. However the government's policies are already increasing homelessness, and by their own admission will continue to do so. Far from articulating ways to solve the problem, they are making it dramatically worse. Their whole vision for ending rough sleeping is thus just an empty promise and a waste of words. I can only hope that the members of parliament who signed their names to this incredibly hypocritical document are eventually held to account for it.