Homelessness

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

My Lords, I start by adding my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for calling this debate on such a crucial issue. I declare my interest as CEO of the Centre for Social Justice, where we are currently undertaking a piece of work looking at eradicating homelessness, focused particularly on the area of rough sleeping. This work is chaired by Brooks Newmark, the former MP for Braintree.

For the past decade, we have sought to tackle the root causes of poverty in Britain, focusing on family breakdown, failed education, addiction, debt and worklessness. Through my work on the front line, running a night shelter and hostel for many years, I saw at first hand the devastating impact that those dynamics have on an individual’s life when they converge and how all these factors interact to entrench disadvantage, potentially even resulting in the loss of a home. The London CHAIN rough sleeper database found that 43% of rough sleepers had an alcohol support need and just over three in 10 had a drugs support need.

As we all know, a secure, stable home is fundamental to the life chances of all of us, but particularly to the life chances of the poorest. Without it, adults can struggle to maintain employment or provide the sort of home that is crucial for the nurture and flourishing of children. I therefore strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to a robust social justice agenda which focuses on early intervention to prevent issues spiralling out of control. This approach has two main advantages: first, it generates significant longer-term financial savings, but it also saves people from years of personal pain.

It is because of the focus on early intervention and prevention that I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment, made just before Christmas, to consider better ways to prevent homelessness, including how legislation could be improved. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned, over the past five years, Wales and Scotland have introduced new legislation to tackle these problems. The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 brought in stronger prevention and relief duties for eligible homeless households, regardless of priority need status. Although it is early days, statistics from the Welsh Government show that the new model is working, with the number of households who lose their home falling by up to two-thirds. Any programme achieving this sort of impact needs to be closely examined for lessons that we could learn here.

I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister to consider supporting Conservative MP Bob Blackman’s Private Member’s Bill, which, reflecting the principles of the Welsh legislation, would: place a stronger duty on local authorities to prevent homelessness; extend the definition of “threatened with homelessness” from 28 to 56 days; require local authorities to take reasonable steps to help to secure accommodation for all eligible homeless households; and entitle single people to access emergency accommodation if they have nowhere safe to stay that night.

Drawing on lessons from Wales, it has been estimated that such a law could have up-front costs of about £44 million, but almost immediate savings of £47 million. Thanks to the Government’s protection of homelessness spending in the most recent Budget, resources are available to help with those potential up-front costs. Could we consider this?

As well as taking an early-intervention approach, we need to ensure that robust support is provided for people who are already homeless. This is particularly the case for people who have complex needs, as we have already heard in the Chamber tonight. Homeless Link found that 76% of homelessness accommodation projects have had to refuse access to people whose needs were too high—a situation that needs urgent attention. Therefore, I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment in the Budget to doubling the funding for the rough sleeping social impact bond from £5 million to £10 million, to drive innovative ways of tackling entrenched rough sleeping, including Housing First approaches.

Housing First provides someone with immediate permanent accommodation and wraparound support to help them maintain their tenancy. It covers areas of alcohol, drugs, mental health and historic abuse. The service is highly personalised and an individual will work with a key worker who will co-ordinate the support that they need, rather than having to work with a range of different agencies. There is strong evidence to show that the Housing First approach is very successful in moving people with complex needs away from street homelessness. This has to be our objective.

I commend the Government for their focus on this important issue and ask that they consider the twin approach of early preventive action to prevent homelessness and Housing First for those who have fallen through the net.