Homelessness

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Suttie for sponsoring this debate. We visited St Mungo’s Broadway together to see its work last year. As a former trustee of Homeless Link, the membership body for organisations working with homeless people, over the years I have had the privilege of seeing St Mungo’s Broadway’s innovative approach, led by Howard Sinclair. It has never ceased to impress. Street Link is just one of the examples. It was set up in 2012 by St Mungo’s and Homeless Link to connect people on the street as quickly as possible to local services. It continues to have very welcome support from the Government, including the No Second Night Out initiative referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham.

Fifty years ago, Shelter was formed, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned, with the express ambition of quickly putting itself out of business. A short walk from here along the Strand any evening of the week suggests that the work of my former employer, Shelter, is needed now more than ever. The stats seem to bear out what we can all see, especially in inner cities, not just London but elsewhere. The latest quarterly figures, which came out at the end of January for the period October to December 2015, show that outreach teams recorded 2,862 individuals sleeping rough in the capital, a 12% increase on the total figure for October to December 2014. New rough sleepers accounted for 46% of all rough sleepers. In a way, the good news is that there are fewer people out for longer periods of time. It would seem that there is some achievement in that area. Intermittent rough sleepers account for 39% of all those recorded.

Will the Minister share with us what is happening with the Government’s statistics, which are now under criticism and scrutiny? The recent assessment by the UK Statistics Authority concluded that the official statistics for homelessness prevention and relief and rough sleeping do not currently meet the required standard of trustworthiness, quality and value to be designated as national statistics. They have been retained, on condition that urgent action is taken by the Government to make a series of required improvements. That seems a far cry from when my former colleague Louise Casey was in charge of this.

Today, I would like to tease out one of the things that particularly affects homelessness, which is the danger of unintended consequences when developing policies in government and the need, among friends and in this safe atmosphere, for Governments occasionally to change their minds and recognise when policies go wrong in this area. Away from party point scoring, there is value in recognising just how often Governments with the best of intentions end up with some of the worst case scenarios. From right to buy and care in the community all the way to the spare room subsidy or the bedroom tax, recent political history is awash with policies that have impacted badly on homeless people

Other speakers referred to the overall supply of affordable housing and the chronic decline in social housing. What has been needed ever since right to buy is a substantial housebuilding programme, but the loss resulting from the sale of 1.7 million council homes between 1979 and 2001—covering two Governments—has never been recouped. Local authorities are now left with such limited stock that today’s councils find themselves in the invidious position of deciding to move homeless foreigners out of their own boroughs to areas with cheaper rents for temporary accommodation. As Inside Housing and others have shown, the increase in the number of households placed outside the capital often comprises vulnerable families. Often, a local authority in receipt of them has not been informed that they are within their area.

Given all we know, those accepted as homeless often have complex issues. As Homeless Link’s research showed, 78% report a physical health problem and 86% report some form of mental health difficulty. From those on the front line of street homelessness represented by Homeless Link, the most pressing concern right here, right now—and possibly an unintended consequence—is the proposed cap to social rents to LHA levels. I would love to hear from the Minister some reassurance on that because this is in the welfare area. Many of Homeless Link’s members now say that they will be forced to close homeless provision, hostels, supported accommodation and refuges. There is also a danger in terms of funding that drives more and more towards generic provision of service and away from specialised services, for instance for women or trans communities. These are unintended but damaging consequences.

I can recall as far back as 1996 when at Shelter I asked my policy team why housing benefit did not go direct to recipients rather than landlords—a classic question coming from a Liberal, if you will forgive me. Now, having seen how HLA will be delivered, I can see unintended consequences from it going to any chaotic individual rather than the landlord. However, I am out of time.