Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assistance his Department provides to homeless people to help them access the private rented sector.

One person without a home is one too many and we are committed to do all we can to prevent homelessness. That is why we have increased central investment to tackle homelessness over the next four years to £149 million. At Budget 2016, we went further and announced £100 million to deliver low cost ‘move on’ accommodation to enable people leaving hostels and refuges to make a sustainable recovery from a homelessness crisis, providing at least 2,000 places for vulnerable people to enable independent living.

We made a significant investment of nearly £14 million from 2010 to 2016 for Crisis to develop a programme to help single homeless people access private rented sector accommodation. Over 9,000 people had been helped, with over 90% maintaining tenancies for at least 6 months.