Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I congratulate the Opposition Front-Bench team on their continued focus on the issue of homelessness and on the initiative to tackle rough sleeping. Speaking as an MP representing the borough of Westminster, nobody could welcome that more than me. Westminster City Council is, of course, at the frontline of the national crisis in rough sleeping. The council’s draft rough sleeping strategy, which is currently under consideration, shows that 3,000 people sleep rough over the course of a year—300 on any given night—and reminds us of the many complex causes and drivers that have led to the recent rise in homelessness. Colleagues have mentioned some of those factors, but one particular figure jumped out at me as an example of how the Government could learn about the importance of interconnecting services and the role that other Departments’ actions play: a third of rough sleepers in Westminster—32%—have been in prison. It is absolutely extraordinary that we are incapable of preventing people who have come out of prison from ending up on the streets. One in four rough sleepers in Westminster has been assessed as being at a high risk of reoffending, so it is clearly in our public interest to ensure that the crisis does not continue.
Rough sleeping is only the tip of the iceberg, however, and I want to spend a couple of minutes on the issues that were brought out by the “Temporary Accommodation in London” report by Julie Rugg of the University of York. It tells us about the drivers of family homelessness in London and points out that one in 10 Londoners are on a social housing waiting list and that homelessness acceptances have risen by 77% since 2010. Why is that? We have already talked about supply, repeating the figures and comparing records, so I do not want to do that again, but the Government must properly understand affordability. Even if supply grows—welcome though that will be—if accommodation is unaffordable for people at the lower end of the income spectrum, that will not solve homelessness and the Homelessness Reduction Bill, which we are coalescing around and want to see succeed, will be swimming against the tide.
The Rugg report also helps us to understand that the cuts to social security benefits and the local housing allowance, the benefit cap and other policies are driving homelessness, making it impossible for people on lower incomes to afford accommodation and causing landlords to withdraw from letting private rented accommodation to people on low incomes. According to the Residential Landlords Association, a staggering 81% of landlords are unwilling to consider homeless people on housing benefit because of the threat to their income from universal credit. In inner London, only 7% or 9% of accommodation—I do not have the figure in front of me, but the proportion is ridiculously small—is available to people on lower incomes. When the Welfare Reform Act 2012 went through Parliament, we were told that rents would fall as cuts to housing benefit were applied, but the opposite has happened: rents in London went up by 32% in outer London and 39% in inner London. That is a cause of homelessness, and the situation will get worse unless we do something about it.
The problem is not only leading to individual homelessness but costing local authorities money. London local authorities alone have spent £665 million on homelessness. Discretionary housing payments are always put forward by the Government as the solution to all the problems, but they are not, because they are temporary by definition. Until the Government understand that local authorities will not use discretionary housing payments to solve the crisis because of their temporary nature, we will end up repeating the problems.
Unfortunately, I do not have much time to talk about temporary accommodation and the fact that the squeeze on local authorities is leading to families spending this Christmas in appalling conditions. In particular, I ask the Minister to help me deal with A2Dominion, a housing association that is leaving many residents without heating in damp and mouldy accommodation. Children and families should not be spending Christmas homeless on the street, in bed and breakfasts or in nightly booked and insecure temporary accommodation. They are doing so in record numbers, and the Government must act not only through the Department for Communities and Local Government, but by co-ordinating with all the other Departments that contribute to the problem through their actions.