Homelessness

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on securing this important, albeit short, debate, and on his comprehensive opening remarks, which captured the broad nature of the challenge before us. Homelessness is undoubtedly one of the most important and pressing social issues of our time, and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to discuss it in the Chamber. While I do not have a string of interests to declare, I am personally passionate about this issue.

Homelessness is, by its nature, a complex issue, as we have already heard. The causes can vary from person to person and, unsurprisingly, there is no panacea—but this complexity must never lead us to view homelessness as something that cannot be addressed: an unavoidable feature of modern society. It is not; it is something that we can tackle. Homelessness is avoidable and doing something is firmly within our control. Indeed, there are many tools at the disposal of the Government for both tackling and, importantly, preventing homelessness, and I believe that they have an obligation to use these tools as effectively as possible. Given the short time available, I will focus particularly on one of these tools, which has been touched on.

Last year, the Chancellor announced a four-year freeze on rates of local housing allowance—that is, housing benefit paid to those living in the private rented sector. Almost 400,000 working families in England receive local housing allowance, and they contain almost 750,000 children. Local housing allowance is a lifeline for those families. It provides support to bridge the gap between wages and the essentials of living. For many, it is the difference between keeping the roof over their head and homelessness.

Analysis from the housing and homelessness charity Shelter shows that if the freeze continues, by 2020, families in four-fifths of the country could face a gap between the support they need to pay their rent and the maximum support they are entitled to. This could affect 330,000 working families. Furthermore, this gap is likely to be significant. We are not talking about a few pounds here. In almost a third of the country, working families will face a gap of more than £100 a month between the support available and the rent due.

What does this mean? Private tenants could be at risk of homelessness if they cannot find the money to meet the shortfall. Families will be put at increased risk of homelessness if they are evicted because of arrears or they cannot find an affordable property when their tenancy ends. Let us think about that. That means that rents are detached from the support available. Landlords will potentially view households on housing benefit as a far riskier prospect because of this, further reducing the pool of properties available to lower-income households. We therefore find ourselves in the bizarre situation where a government policy designed to help people meet their housing costs not only fails to do so but may even increase their risk of homelessness in the process.

Local housing allowance rates should reflect the real cost of renting in each area to ensure the availability of affordable properties and prevent shortfalls and therefore homelessness, just as they were intended to. I therefore urge the Minister through his good offices to think very carefully about the freeze on local housing allowance. If we are looking at a cross-departmental strategy, that should be part of it.

I am of course not alone in calling for this. The problem has been highlighted on numerous occasions, most recently in the CLG Select Committee report, which urged the Government to review local housing allowance levels so that they would more closely reflect market rents.

I hope that with the new Government, this issue will be thought about. I certainly admire the Prime Minister’s commitment to make Britain a place that works for everyone, including these families.