Ambition 1: To tackle the root causes of homelessness This is the most challenging of our three ambitions.
It will need:
Most people who face losing their current home manage to find a way to avoid homelessness. What’s the secret?
Our first set of proposals aims to fill the gap where these don’t exist or don’t work.
Prevention must cover:
Our understanding and strategies have to start from the experience of people who are or have been homeless and those with similar histories who have avoided it.
People are particularly vulnerable to homelessness when they move from one stage of their lives to another, for example, young people leaving home, people leaving the armed services or people who lose a partner or someone else they rely on in later life.
For vulnerable young people it is not good enough to offer services until they are 16 or 18 and then expect them to fend for themselves. The greatest challenges they face are during their late teens and early 20s, as they try to establish themselves as adults.
We therefore welcome the Government’s recent Green Paper, Care Matters, which says "We want to abandon a system where young people are forced to leave care as early as age 16. We want an approach which continues to support them as long as they need it, which ceases to talk about 'leaving care' and instead ensures that young people move on in a gradual, phased and above all prepared way."
Foyers are specialist hostels that work with young people. They focus on supporting residents to gain education, training and skills that will help them into work. Skilled staff provide support that helps the young people tackle other personal issues that may put them at risk of homelessness.
For more details see: http://www.foyer.net
The Government encourages councils to refocus their homelessness services towards prevention. Where this has been taken on with energy it can bring about very significant positive change. However, often help can only be offered when someone approaches the council in a crisis. The challenge is to move prevention to further upstream. The Government’s Social Exclusion Action Plan identifies the value of working as early as possible with children and families at risk of social exclusion, which is inevitably linked to risk of homelessness.
Early interventions need the involvement of a wide range of public and third sector services:
"We can see a clear pattern that when a young person between 11 and 13 years old is having real difficulty in the family, perhaps their mum just isn’t coping, he or she is much more likely to end up homeless at 16 or 17."
Connexions manager
Newcastle City Council have put in place a partnership with local housing providers and voluntary sector services, which provides an early warning when a vulnerable person is getting into trouble with their tenancy. This triggers input from agencies that can help the person get back on track and keep their home.
Many local authorities are developing effective emergency preventative approaches, often with the third sector, that can stop someone becoming homeless or give them breathing space for the move to a new home to be planned.
• County court assistance schemes
• family mediation services
• rent deposit services
• sanctuary schemes for people suffering domestic violence.
Government policy on preventing and tackling homelessness is developed in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Sometimes policies developed in other departments can inadvertently start to create homelessness or may block solutions to resolving it.
In 2004 the Government allowed people from the European Accession States to enter the UK to work. Hundreds of thousands have come and successfully found work, making a significant contribution to the economy. However, the Government restricted access to public funds for anyone out of work. This has meant that a small number who have found themselves out of work for whatever reason have ended up homeless and destitute. In London 15% of people using day centres and free night shelters are A8 nationals. Homeless Link is discussing with the Government how this problem can be solved.
KEY AREAS TO WATCH ARE:
• employment and labour market changes
• tax and benefits
• residents, including migrants, who do not have full welfare protection
• business failures
• personal finance and credit including increasing debt
• education changes
• health and care service changes
• trends in discharges from armed services, long stay hospitals or prisons.
The homelessness legislation provides a safety net for those in ‘priority need’: families with children and some other households that are considered 'vulnerable'. The test for vulnerability is a tight one. Many people don’t meet it, even when they feel they can’t cope.
Many local authorities, especially in cities, have developed emergency accommodation, such as hostels or shelters, for homeless people. Other areas have little or no emergency accommodation. Originally it was planned that the law would provide a more universal safety net. Scotland has taken a decision to abolish the ‘priority need’ test by 2012. The shortage of social housing in many parts of England has discouraged a similar approach.
The outcome is that young people or people with mental illness who are accepted as homeless can end up in B&B or other temporary accommodation without support. On the other hand are people who have slept rough and ended up in hostels, who get support but find it difficult to get rehoused as they are not ‘statutory homeless’.
To end homelessness we need to offer a menu of solutions suiting the individual circumstances of people who are homeless but who do not currently meet the ‘priority need’ test.
"The United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights establishes the right of every person to have an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing. It is our view that there should not be homeless people in the UK in 2004. A home is a fundamental right which should not be denied to anyone living in as affluent and ambitious a society as our own."
ODPM Select Committee Report on Homelessness 2004
"We had a case last week that was typical. This guy had been to the council after he lost his flat but was told that he was non-priority. They gave him a list of B&Bs but they were all full. We had to tell him that there isn’t a hostel around here and our only option is to stick him on a bus to Manchester where he has a better chance of getting in somewhere. What other choice is there? It’s terrible."
Day centre manager, Lake District.
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