Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Debate between Emma Reynolds and Shabana Mahmood

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.