Homelessness and Rough Sleeping

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the problem is national. I am an MP for the country’s second city—despite what my Mancunian colleagues might think—which has the largest local authority in Europe, so the pressures in Birmingham are stark, but homelessness presents itself across the country in different ways.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is already making a powerful case. Does she share my concern that local authorities, in particular those facing the highest levels of need—I am sure that Birmingham is similar to Nottingham in that regard—are actually facing disproportionate Government cuts? Homelessness prevention services and other discretionary services are increasingly being cut to meet those demands. Is she as worried as me that that will actually lead to an increase in those seeking help with homelessness?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to some of the issues she raises later in my speech and I will use the example of SIFA Fireside, a charity in my constituency, to illustrate the pressures that homelessness services are under. Where are people supposed to go when services are being cut? I hope that the Minister may be able to provide some guidance on what I can say to my constituents when they ask me, because I simply do not have any answers for them.

In 2012-13, 922 households in Birmingham were in temporary accommodation, which is up 32% on the previous year, and 115 of them were in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Just like my constituent, households have often found themselves in bed-and-breakfast accommodation that is not fit for purpose. When I was first elected in 2010, the majority of homelessness-related cases that came to me involved people who could be described as vulnerable, such as women escaping domestic violence, people with mental health problems and people with drug or drink issues. I had several cases of people who had left the care system without adequate support and had found themselves homeless. There were also people who had come out of prison and who may have been in and out of prison over many years. A chunk of my casework involved people with unregularised status in this country, such as the people living in a twilight world while waiting for a decision on their asylum case from the UK Border Agency, as was, or the Home Office. Such people had no recourse to public funds and were homeless as a result.

Now, however, although those groups remain well represented in my homelessness case load, I am seeing an increase in the number of people—families, in particular—who have been made homeless as a result of their private sector tenancy coming to an end and their being unable to find or afford anywhere else to live. Some months ago, for example, I met a couple who had a business a few years ago, but it had run into trouble as a result of the recession. They had lost it and could not keep up the payments on their home, so they lost their home as well. They managed to get other jobs, earning much less than before, but a job is a job. They are working hard and were renting in the private rented sector, but the rent went up and they could not afford the increase, so they found themselves homeless. They were struggling to find anywhere else to live that they could afford on their budget.

I am seeing many more cases of that nature. The end of a private sector tenancy now accounts for 22% of all homelessness acceptances nationally, a rate that I fear is likely to increase further and, in my constituency, the biggest rate of increase that I am seeing in my own case load. The two main, connected reasons are that the cost of renting is going up—since 2010, it has increased by more than twice as much as wages—and house building is at its lowest peacetime level since the 1920s. The failure to deal with housing supply is not only causing a huge strain now, but storing deep problems for us as a society for the future.

To go back to the case of my constituent, let us think about the effect on her two daughters. Even when I met them in my surgery, they were quite down and displaying a nervous disposition; their mum told me how their performance at school had dipped; and they were upset. As I mentioned earlier, I was struck by how their only ask was somewhere clean to live. The pressure on families and young people, children in particular, from always being desperate to move and never being able to put down roots causes those young people lasting harm, which will present itself in different ways in the future, whether in educational outcomes or in their level of confidence. Those are deep problems.

Homelessness is an isolating and deskilling experience for the people affected. It affects their health and well-being in a significant and often lasting and damaging way. It affects the educational outcomes of the children who find themselves homeless alongside their families. In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said, the organisations that are there to help when people find themselves homeless are also under acute pressure.

If we look at Birmingham city council first and foremost, it is facing some of the largest cuts in local government history. Over the next few months, the council will have to make difficult choices that will permanently change the social fabric of the wonderful city of Birmingham. There are a number of pressures, but housing supply is key, and the waiting list for people who want to transfer to other council housing is large.