Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

The ability of people to swap depends on appropriate accommodation for the people who want to downsize or upsize to go into, and my point is that housing supply throughout my city is simply not enough for all kinds of homes. I spoke about the lack of affordable and social housing, but there is also a lack of housing for people to buy privately—not enough is being built anywhere in the city. The numbers simply have not kept up with demand. Swapping and other such solutions therefore will not deal with the large numbers presenting themselves in Birmingham. I am afraid that unless we could build thousands of homes overnight, my city will not be able to cope with the issues that it is facing, some but not all of which result in homelessness.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that the Government’s own impact assessment assumes that 90% of the people hit by the bedroom tax will simply not move? As to the cost projections, the fact is that people will not have the smaller homes to move into, as she is suggesting.

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend the shadow Minister is absolutely right to cite the Government’s own impact assessment. If people who are moving are forced into the private rented sector and their rents go up, that puts extra pressure on the housing benefit budget as well. I have not focused on welfare and benefits in my speech, but that is an additional pressure and an additional cost for the state, as it meets the increased demand and as rent in the private rented sector goes up.

Organisations under pressure include not only Birmingham city council, but many that provide support to the homeless. I have mentioned SIFA Fireside, a charity based in my constituency that works with the homeless. Its representatives visited me and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister in Parliament a couple of weeks ago. They brought a group of homeless people from across Birmingham and the west Midlands, so that they could speak to parliamentarians about the problems they face. It provides practical support to homeless people, including daily drop-in sessions, a resettlement service, a specialist alcohol support service and an employment and training programme.

In 2012-13, SIFA Fireside provided just over 35,000 meals, 500 food parcels and 3,700 showers. We are talking about real basics: food, somewhere to have a wash and somebody to help people make some phone calls to try to get their lives back on track—the charity made just over 4,000 phone calls on behalf of people who are homeless to help them sort out somewhere else to move on to and ultimately, they hope, somewhere permanent to live. But rising prices are causing a cost of living crisis for families up and down the country, and neither businesses nor charities are exempt from that problem. Rising costs have forced SIFA Fireside to cut by half the number of meals it will provide in the coming year, because it can now afford to put on only one meal a day for homeless people.

SIFA Fireside provides a vital lifeline for Birmingham’s homeless people, especially over the winter months, but is facing real challenges just to stay open. Although I am sure that all Members are grateful for the safety net that charities such as SIFA Fireside are providing in constituencies across the country, we cannot take that for granted: charities are under significant pressure and the availability of their services will be significantly curtailed—certainly, that is what I am seeing in my constituency.

Several systemic problems cause homelessness. The primary one is the issue we face with house building, and the fact that housing supply has simply not kept up with demand. Also, the private rented sector is not fit for families, as it does not give people the security they need or predictable rent rises that would allow people to plan their household budgets. Finally, the bedroom tax is causing acute concern. We need to look at those issues in order to deal with the problem of homelessness. Doing so will not fix the problem entirely, as people find themselves homeless for many reasons, but I believe that for the 80,000 or so children whom we expect to be homeless—that is according to the official figures, and I think the real figure is probably higher—dealing with the problems with both house building and the private rented sector and scrapping the bedroom tax would be pretty good places to start.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) on securing such an important and, unfortunately, timely debate. Christmas is coming and we are looking forward to spending time with our families, but we know, as she said, that many families across the country will not be celebrating this Christmas; they will be in temporary accommodation, and many people will be sleeping on the streets.

I pay tribute to the work of the charities hon. Members have mentioned, and the volunteers who work all year to provide invaluable support to those who are homeless and those sleeping on the streets. The UK is the seventh richest country in the world, yet homelessness and rough sleeping are increasing year on year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) explained, the figures are getting worse; since the Government came to power, rough sleeping and homelessness are up by one third. It is heartbreaking that 80,000 children will be without a permanent home this Christmas. The number of families with children living in bed and breakfasts is at a 10-year high. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) spoke movingly about that issue in her constituency.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, set out, the reality of living in a bed and breakfast is absolutely shocking. She spoke movingly about the case of her constituent and her daughters. In more than half the cases investigated by Shelter this year, children in such accommodation were sharing beds with their parents or siblings, and two thirds of families said that their children had no table to eat meals on, and often had to eat on the floor or bed. As my hon. Friend points out, homeless children living in temporary accommodation are more likely to fall behind at school, and lose vital opportunities at that formative age to develop and grow in a healthy living environment.

Rough sleeping is increasing, and has gone up by a third. Hon. Members referred to the wide-ranging and complex reasons why people end up living on the streets. I pay tribute to the work my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) did, even before she became an MP, in providing support for victims of domestic abuse. Many women and men end up living on the streets as a result of such abuse. Some have come out of institutions, such as care settings or prison. The effects of sleeping rough are enormously damaging to people’s physical and mental health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) set out in her excellent speech. As the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) movingly described, many people who live on the streets are at risk of dying prematurely. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale pointed out that the average age of death for rough sleepers is 47, which is a tragic statistic.

The previous Labour Government were determined to tackle the problem, which is why we introduced the Supporting People programme, bringing together seven income streams from across Government to give the necessary support to those at risk of homelessness, or those who were already homeless. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale mentioned, we had great determination to bear down on and tackle homelessness. As a result, it decreased by 70% during our period in government. Although it is clear that the reasons for homelessness are complex and wide-ranging, under the current Government, figures show that homelessness and rough sleeping have grown significantly worse.

The Government have failed to tackle the chronic housing shortage so central to the cost of living crisis. The cruel and iniquitous bedroom tax is putting many social tenants at risk of eviction, because they are falling into arrears for the first time. The 60% cut to the affordable homes budget when the Government came to power has had an impact on the number and affordability of homes available. The Government have also cut away support at a time when there are more and more homeless people, who are in need of help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South pointed out, cuts to local government budgets are hitting homelessness services disproportionately. We have seen a fall in the number of beds that homeless shelters can offer.

I pay tribute to the work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). Last year, he brought together a group of 100 people in the first ever young homeless people’s parliament. The Minister met that group in December last year. Although it is good that the Government have continued the initiative, I am sad to report that they did not do so on a cross-party basis, and we were not invited to the meeting earlier this week with young homeless people who came to Parliament to discuss their concerns. I hope that the Minister will implore his colleagues to organise the next meeting on a cross-party basis.

As the young people who came to Parliament last year demonstrated, vital services need to be brought together to help those at risk of homelessness, but other factors also contribute to homelessness. Hon. Members talked about the lack of homes in our country. The sad truth is that the Government are presiding over the lowest peacetime level of house building since the 1920s. We are not building even half the number of homes needed to keep up with demand. While home ownership is falling for the first time in more then a century, private rents are soaring, particularly in our big cities. In London, 59% of an average income is consumed by rent; outside London, the figure is 41%.

As many hon. Friends have pointed out, the loss of an assured shorthold tenancy is now one of the key drivers of homelessness; more than one in four households are accepted as homeless for that reason, and that number has tripled in the past three years. The Government said that they would introduce a tenants’ charter, but I worry that it will be a meaningless and toothless initiative if it does not deliver what we desperately need: longer-term, more stable tenancies, with predictable rents. The truth is that the 9 million people who live in the private rented sector are being let down by poor standards in the sector. It is the worst type of housing to be in, because, according to the English housing survey, one third of homes in the private rented sector do not meet even basic standards. Tenants will seldom complain to their landlord because it puts them at risk of eviction. We must redress the balance of power between the landlord, letting agents, and tenants. Tenants simply do not have the protections in law that they need; those protections that they do have are seldom enforced. The Government need to look at those issues seriously.

A Labour Government would tackle the cost of living crisis and the chronic shortage of housing. We have pledged to build 200,000 homes a year by 2020. We would scrap the cruel and unfair bedroom tax. We would freeze energy bills for millions of hard-pressed families. Crucially, we aim to reform and regulate the private rented sector to bring about more secure, longer-term tenancies, especially for families with children. We will introduce a national register of landlords; in fact, we had the measures in place to introduce such a register at the end of our time in office, but the current Government got rid of the plans within weeks of coming to power. We will empower local authorities to bring in licensing schemes across the private rented sector. At the moment, they have to jump through a lot of hoops to prove that a licensing scheme is needed and can introduce one only in a particular geographical area, or for a particular type of accommodation.

It is regrettable that the number of families in temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation is rising. As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) pointed out, the number of people sleeping on our streets is also on the increase. We know that the Minister is one of those Ministers who are willing to speak truth to power—there are not many. We heard him do so in recent weeks in a dramatic fashion, so I implore him to make demands of his Government to get a grip on the issue sooner rather than later. It is a tragedy that so many families with children are living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation over Christmas, and that so many people find themselves with no option other than to sleep on our streets.