Homeless Young People

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Gilbert]

The hon. Lady makes a perfectly valid point. Abuse can come in many forms, whether violent, sexual or psychological. Often, family breakdown has a lasting negative impact on people’s mental health. I have a constituent who was turned away by his family and booted out the door because he came out to them as gay. That had a devastating impact, and when he presented to Cornwall council as homeless and was unable to get any support, it felt like a double whammy. Ultimately, we were able to secure support for him, but the hon. Lady makes exactly the right point—many of the individuals who present as homeless have complex underlying needs. We do not do them or ourselves a favour if we do not address those needs.

The first place where many people present with complex needs is their local council. Councils are in a unique position to assist people, but when they fail to do so, people in need of help can be left with nowhere to go and their experience can quickly spiral deeper and deeper into chaotic homelessness. Evidence shows that while the number of young people accepted by local authorities as statutorily homeless is going down, the number of young people accessing homelessness services is increasing.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this exceptionally important debate. Does he agree that there is a risk that the figures he cites underplay the extent of the problem? I have a constituent who for immigration purposes has no recourse to public funds. Her baby daughter—the daughter of a British man who through violence is no longer part of that household—desperately needs adequate housing, yet the council takes the view that it is not obliged to meet the housing need of the mother or that little girl.

[Stephen Gilbert]

My hon. Friend is a passionate campaigner on these issues for his constituents, and he makes exactly the right point. The official statistics belie the reality of the situation. We know the numbers presented by the Minister, the Department and third parties, such as Crisis, but we are all aware that the housing crisis is such that many thousands more people than the official figures suggest are in inappropriate or overcrowded accommodation or stuck at home in difficult relationships or sofa-surfing. Part of the answer, as I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate, is getting on and building more homes, but it is also about making the pathways easier for those presenting as homeless.

One of the tragedies is that most single homeless people are not considered to be a priority by local authorities, meaning that the council has no legal duty to find them housing. Many are ignored and given little or no help. Crisis recently carried out a mystery shopper exercise called “Turned Away”, in which eight formerly homeless people visited 16 local authorities to examine the quality of advice and assistance provided to single homeless people. In well over half—50 of the 87 visits—the help offered was inadequate. In 29 cases, they were simply turned away without any help or the opportunity to speak to a housing adviser. That included situations where the mystery shoppers were portraying very vulnerable characters, such as a victim of domestic violence or a woman with serious mental health problems.

That is the result when single homeless people actually get in front of the local authority, but many can be deterred from approaching their local authority at all because of previous negative experiences or low expectations on the outcome. A third of single homeless people who had previously approached their local authority for help said that they did not do so during their most recent episode of homelessness because of the lack of help offered the first time round.

When homeless people do approach their council, the consequences of being turned away with no support can be disastrous. Many are left with no option but to sleep on the floors of friends and family, squat in abandoned buildings or, in the worst examples, sleep rough. That can lead to their falling into a situation where support needs and other issues develop, resulting in their being trapped in homelessness for far longer. We all know that rough sleeping is a traumatising experience that impacts hugely on an individual’s health and well-being. Mental and physical health problems can be exacerbated by rough sleeping. Homelessness is also dangerous, with homeless people 13 times more likely to be victims of crime than the general public. Indeed, the average age of death for someone sleeping rough is just 47, which is 30 years younger than the national average. Homelessness is also expensive. As well as the huge personal cost to individuals, the financial costs are significant. The annual cost of homelessness to the Exchequer is estimated to be £1 billion.

We need to take action now to ensure that homeless people get the help they need. The law creates a two-tier system, with one level for those in priority need who are owed the full homelessness duty by their local authority and another for those who are judged not to be owed that duty and can be turned away with little or no help. I want to see all parties in the House commit to carrying out a review of the support given to single people under homelessness legislation in England.

Over the years, Governments of all colours have tried to resolve the persistent problem of single homelessness, but the law has always held back progress. The devolved Governments in Scotland and Wales have taken different approaches. In Scotland, priority need has been abolished, meaning that all homeless people are entitled to accommodation. The Welsh Government have recently introduced a new duty for local authorities to take steps to prevent homelessness for anyone threatened with losing their home, regardless of their priority need status. That shows that reform is possible. The next UK Government should consider what lessons can be learned to reform the law in England.

As the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) said, there is a lot of support for tackling homelessness—56% of the public agree that the Government should do more and 78% of MPs believe that tackling homelessness should be a priority. We regularly hear from colleagues in the Tea Room about the difficult experiences we all have in getting help for the very vulnerable people who approach us. The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) made that point. Homelessness is a devastating experience that should not happen to anyone in the 21st century.

--- Later in debate ---

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) on securing this debate on a policy area in which he has developed extensive expertise, both while in Parliament and previously. I have great admiration for that.

I am not a housing policy expert, unlike other hon. Members who have spoken. I am a generalist, but like others I have the ability to do something that is at the heart of an MP’s job as a representative: to tell my constituents’ stories to people in power in Parliament, who can do something about them. I mentioned in an intervention a terrible case of housing need, affecting a woman and her family, which not only the council but Government policy refuse to address. I think that beneath that, ultimately, is the desire to create a hostile environment, so as to achieve other policy objectives. However, I want to bring to the debate the stories of three working men: family men in full-time permanent employment, whose families are under all sorts of pressures. Such situations are generally multi-factorial; there is not just one thing to be fixed, to make things right.

The families involved are at risk of being totally undermined by their housing need. That is an important point. House building is often not very popular with some of my constituents and there is great scepticism among them about whether house building will, of itself, serve the housing need in their communities. However, much of the housing need is not visible to them in the way it is to Members of Parliament, who have the privilege of coming to an appreciation of it in our constituency surgeries.

The housing need of the men whose situations I will discuss is well hidden; as I hope to explain through their cases, failure to address it could ultimately generate greater housing need. We are told that family breakdown is one of the causes of increased household formation, which is a major factor driving the need for housing. Although it might not be as easy to consider that issue when debating housing as it is to scapegoat groups of people or blame immigration policy, it is a very real factor in the housing need of our society, and so I hope to shine a light on it briefly this afternoon.

The first case I want to tell hon. Members about is that of a man with a family of seven, with an eighth child who is now at university and so no longer in the household but who is still being supported as well. He is a working man with a full-time permanent job who has been supporting his family. The man was in a private let, with no need for support from the Government, supporting his family and working hard to provide their standard of living. But when that private let came to an end, as the landlord exercised their right to put their investments elsewhere, the man found it impossible to find another for a family of his size.

For the first time, therefore, the man turned to the public sector for support through social housing; private landlords refused to take a family of that size because of concerns about wear and tear on their properties. He managed to get some social housing in Chippenham, but what he got for his family of seven was a two-bedroom flat. They are suffering from chronic overcrowding, and it is proving incredibly difficult to meet their housing need. We all know that if that family were not to stay together great priority would be given to meeting their new housing need, but as long as he keeps his job and they stay together, it is difficult for them to receive the housing that they need to live together as a family.

The next working man whose story I want to tell is a single father who is sharing an open-plan studio flat—although frankly I cannot quite tell what the difference is between that and a bedsit—with his 15-year-old daughter. Given the layout of the flat, he does his best to provide her with some privacy, but it is difficult for the pair of them to share it. It is a private let, and he has a good relationship with the landlord, who does what can be done to make the home affordable.

The truth of the matter is that that family need somewhere bigger, but because the father has to meet debt repayments—repayments that he has been keeping up, on a reasonable loan with a respectable lender—he is not able to afford the housing that they need; nor is he eligible for any help. It is incredibly important to him that his daughter should be able to live with him, but we know that if that family were to break up and she were to live with someone else or seek independent support for housing, she would be a greater priority than if the pair of them were to continue, as is their choice, to live together as a family. By failing to meet his need we not only risk the future of that family unit but could create greater demands for help with housing.

The final story I wish to share is altogether more complicated and illustrates how vulnerable people with housing needs can be refused help because of the complexity of their circumstances. A professional working man came to see me. He and his partner are going through child protection processes because he is a victim of domestic violence from her, and although, as I understand it, she has never caused any harm to the children in the household, she has been told that she cannot stay overnight in the family home in the interests of protecting the children. If the children are not to be taken into care, she can no longer use her home and so is homeless.

That woman grew up with learning difficulties and suffers serious mental illness. Of course the children in that family should be protected. However, she is a vulnerable person who needs help. Instead, the action of one department of the council has created a situation in which she has been forced out of her home. She has been forced to sleep on the sofas of friends and relatives. She has no entitlement to support with her housing need and has been denied any because technically she has a home, even though the council has made it impossible for her to live in it.

These are the difficult and hidden stories of my constituents and the housing needs they have in the otherwise delightful part of Wiltshire in which we have the privilege to live. Those stories illustrate the housing need that we, as a society, have to address. They also illustrate—I hope the Minister will grapple with this challenge—the need to take preventive action on homelessness, so that we do not find ourselves meeting the much greater costs of dealing with the crises and the further housing need that follow family breakdown. Unless we can face up to those difficult challenges, we will find an even greater task ahead of us.