Housing

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, for initiating this all-important debate and his eloquent summary of the current situation. I am registered as a vice-chair of the All-Party Group for the Private Rented Sector. I think we are all agreed on one thing: we would not start from here and 30 years of lack of housebuilding, in all mixes of tenure, has led us to this point.

At the end of this chain—on the front line—are homeless young people. Once a year, the charity Depaul UK, which works with vulnerable young homeless people, has a “CEO sleepout” to raise funds and awareness. On Monday night 200 of us, including some parliamentary colleagues, slept out. Just one night on a cold slab of concrete serves as a sharp reminder of where roughly 1.3 million young people have at some point ended up; namely, sleeping rough or in an unsafe place.

I recall lobbying both the Major and Blair Governments for the charity, Shelter, about the desperate need to solve supply at that time and even then having a limited impact. All Governments at some point have had within them great advocates for the need to promote supply, particularly of social housing, as the noble Lord, Lord Horam, has shown. But it is never enough.

In the coalition Government, the Help to Buy scheme, bringing empty homes back into use through the empty homes premium, increasing support for self-build and a small increase in the building of social housing were not enough. Even if we were to close down both Houses of Parliament—no, let us close down the whole of Westminster—trained everyone in the area, reskilled them in the skills now lost to the housebuilding industry and started to build in earnest, it would still take too long for the supply of homes to meet current need. As the LGA says, we need to build a minimum of 250,000 homes a year—in the Liberal Democrats, we believe that it should be 300,000. But last year, as the noble Lord has already explained, around 170,000 homes were built.

If we would not start from here, my question for this debate is: is the private rented sector now part of the solution? According to the Financial Times, No. 10 is starting to think that it may be. Now that 20% of the population is living in this sector, with a growing number of people renting throughout their adult lives, perhaps it is. However, our private rented sector in too many cases is simply not fit for purpose, for families or for young people.

Perhaps then this is a moment when this Government should take a long hard look at security in the private rented sector. There can be small but essential changes. My own Private Member’s Bill, to make provision for the rights of renters, will be in Committee in a fortnight—all are welcome to come along. There are two central proposals in it. First, if there is to be a database of rogue landlords, and we welcome that change in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, we believe that it should be open. If a landlord is designated as a rogue landlord under the new Act, a tenant should know that. Secondly, for too long, lettings agents have been able to double-dip into fees: they charge the tenant, who has no choice when it comes to who their letting agent is, having already made the difficult choice of a place to live and the landlord they will have. Instead, lettings agents should charge the landlords only. They are the party who can shop around and make the choice about which lettings agency to use. The law has been successfully changed in Scotland with little impact on either rents or the lettings agent sector.

Yesterday, I met a 41 year-old who has just started renting near Liverpool. He has paid £300 to a lettings agent for “admin fees”, with no transparency and no explanation of what it is for. He has also paid a deposit of just under £1,000. The flat is so damp that water is seeping up through the lino in the kitchen. So what is that £300 for? It is clearly not for checking whether the place was in good order in the first place.

People who rent are faced with significant up-front costs and often very short tenures, and they have to pay more fees and find large deposits every time they move. Young people in particular have to move often, especially in London. In England, the length of a let is always so short that they face those up-front costs again and again.

If the rented sector is part of the solution, or the stop-gap between here and the vision of housing in the future that I think many of us have, it is a market badly in need of reform. Shelter has published with YouGov a detailed survey of more than 3,000 private renters and a study of the differences in legal status of renters elsewhere in Europe. It is entitled Time for Reform: How our Neighbours with Mature Private Renting Markets Guarantee Stability for Renters. The findings are fascinating. I urge the Minister to read it and use it in the current DCLG working group that is looking, right now, at the private rented sector. The report explains that we are the nation with the least stable renting laws in Europe, the only exceptions being Switzerland and Portugal. In all other countries, including Poland, Slovakia and Greece, private renters are given greater security of tenure. Eighty million renters across the countries studied rent in markets where more than a year’s minimum security from eviction without grounds is the legal norm. Both Ireland and Scotland have recently introduced these changes.

We have heard the phrase “take back control” a lot over recent weeks—it is something of a mantra—but young people renting in this country have no or limited control. When the quality is poor, it affects relationships, plans to raise children, travel to work and health. It is time for a generation that has little choice but to rent to have much greater control over how they rent.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness with her long career in campaigning on homelessness and her detailed knowledge of the area. I too am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, for securing this timely and important debate—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

If the noble Earl looks at the speakers list, he will find that he is next but one.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness for jumping the gun. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, for securing this important debate. It is important because it is young people who are most important to the future success of any society. I remind your Lordships of my interests in property, as noted in the register.

The noble Lord’s Motion emphasises the need to provide local housing to sustain communities. We are all becoming increasingly aware of the importance of sustaining relationships for the healthy development of children and young people. Continuity of relationship is the key to recovery from trauma for children and young people in care but it is vital for all our young people.

I hope I may thank the Minister for the priority that the Government have given to housing since the last election. We have had a housing Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, talked about the forthcoming White Paper. The coalition Government legislated in the area of looked-after children for staying put—allowing many care leavers to stay with their foster carers or close to home up to the age of 21. The Government are looking now at staying close—allowing care leavers from children’s homes to remain close to those homes and the important relationships there. In the Children and Social Work Bill, currently being considered, we are looking to support all care leavers up to the age of 25. Between 80% and 90% of care leavers aged 18 to 21 are now described as being in satisfactory accommodation, and Ofsted has recently begun inspecting care leavers’ services. These are all most welcome changes.

I should like to concentrate on housing for young people in care, care leavers, foster carers and families in temporary accommodation. The lack of affordable or suitable housing for care leavers is an issue of grave concern. Over the years, many of those in care and leaving care have expressed these concerns to me and I am particularly grateful to Jordan Morgan, a care leaver who produced his own report on care leaver housing issues from his own experience and those of others. He kindly wrote to and met me recently. I am also grateful to the charity the Who Cares? Trust for its work on the housing of care leavers.

Care leavers are suffering from the lack of affordable housing. They are often forced to rent in the private sector. They are dependent on benefits and can often be in worrying rent arrears, which can become exacerbated by the cut to their housing benefit that occurs at age 22, as they move into the shared room rate. No parent wants to see their child homeless or unable to afford to live safely in the area that they call home. However, many care leavers, unable to benefit from staying put, are facing real challenges in accessing safe, secure and suitable housing. Care leavers are offered homes that they will not be able to afford if they stop receiving benefits and move into work, particularly in London. This leaves individuals either reliant on benefits or facing a move when they find employment, adding increased pressure at an already stressful time. Care leavers are three times more likely to face benefit sanctions then their peers and two-thirds less likely to challenge those sanctions—yet when they do, most sanctions are overturned. Many continue to pay council tax and, too often, face the bailiff for failure to pay.

The tools and resources for individuals moving off benefits and into work are not often available to young people from care. Faced with anything of up to six weeks before their first salary payment and signed off from benefits, some care leavers still have to turn down employment opportunities. There is no consistency across the country for care leavers’ access to local authority accommodation, with some care leavers qualifying for a priority banding only if they have additional vulnerabilities. Fixed-term tenancies can act as cliff edges, forcing young people to move on regularly—often into accommodation of ever-decreasing quality, as the price of rent increases beyond their income.

In their strategy for care leavers Keep on Caring, the Government made a variety of commitments to improve outcomes for care leavers, including experiencing stability and feeling safe and secure, as well as achieving financial stability. I would be grateful to know how the Minister’s department is working with other government departments to increase the amount of suitable housing stock that is available for care leavers to access and how it plans to tackle some of the problems outlined above. I would also welcome an update on what the Government are doing to ensure that homeless young people aged 16 and 17 receive appropriate support during the crucial years of transition to adulthood. Perhaps the Minister could write to me on these issues. I would be grateful if he might consider sharing my concerns with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the Minister of State, Edward Timpson.

The charity Fostering Network has significant concerns about the impact of housing shortages and benefit cuts on foster carers. Staying put—allowing young people to remain with their foster carer to the age of 21—is most welcome but it puts pressure on the sufficiency of foster placements. Furthermore, two-thirds of foster carers report facing reduced financial support for their staying put role, while a quarter say that they cannot afford to provide staying put because of that lack of support. Local authorities are unwilling to assess families for fostering if they are in insecure housing, as they increasingly are. By far the majority of foster families are on low incomes. Foster carers’ homes are often of an inadequate size; this is exacerbated by the bedroom tax. The housing shortage prevents their biological children from moving on, so they lack the capacity to foster. The empty nesters are in decline. It has become more difficult to place sibling groups with foster carers. It is often important to keep together brothers and sisters who have been taken into care. It was reported to me that one foster carer had to sleep on the sofa to accommodate the sibling group of five whom she had felt moved to keep together.

I turn to families in temporary accommodation and their children. I am very grateful to Shelter for its campaigning in this area and its report on families in emergency accommodation, published today. There are 120,000 homeless children in Britain, the highest level since 2007. The number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation is 18% higher than last year—nearly 20% higher. The report looks at 25 families in depth. They all live in a single room, more than half of the parents have to share a bed with their children, three-quarters have to share lavatories and bathrooms with others and two-thirds describe their rooms as being in disrepair.

One family I have been in touch with over the past year began in Southwark, moved to a refuge from domestic violence in Hackney, then to a one-bedroom for the mother, her 16 year-old daughter and one year-old granddaughter, then, following eviction, to a bed and breakfast single room. In that period, the mother’s worst fear was of being rehoused possibly as far afield as Manchester, where she would know no one. This is a common experience nowadays. Thankfully, it now appears that Hackney will provide for her.

I should finish. Does the Minister share my concern for these families? What does he have to say to the increase in the use of bed and breakfast accommodation? When does he envisage the number of children facing homelessness declining? Will he bring forward a cross-departmental strategy on homelessness, as the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the other place recommended on 31 August? I look forward to his response.