There was a time during the pandemic when charity workers dared to hope that the most visible, traumatic aspect of homelessness could be banished from England once and for all.
In just two months in early 2020, the government initiative “Everyone In” had ensured the provision of emergency accommodation to nearly 15,000 people. Rough sleepers were disappearing off the streets.
But hopes this kindled that ministers would honour their manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping altogether by 2024 are fading fast. A resurgence this autumn of cardboard shelters in shop doorways and “tent cities” in public spaces instead reflects stubborn shortcomings in housing and support services.
As of March, the month for which the most recent government data is available, the number of English households in precarious temporary accommodation stood at 104,510 — a 10 per cent annual increase that is threatening to bankrupt local councils. A record 131,000 children were affected. Accounts from non-governmental organisations and local authorities suggest the situation has steadily worsened through the year.
Meanwhile, 4,068 people were rough sleeping just in London from July to September, according to figures commissioned by the Mayor’s office — a rise of nearly 25 per cent on the previous quarter that underscores the severity of the crisis looming this winter.
“It is people being forced into homelessness for the first time, not only people who have experienced it before,” said Francesca Albanese, director of policy and social change at Crisis, the national charity for homelessness. She described a social safety net that is overflowing all the way from emergency night shelters to bed and breakfasts and council flats.
Home secretary Suella Braverman last week sparked a furious backlash with proposals to ban homeless people from pitching tents in urban areas. She later described sleeping rough as a “lifestyle choice”.
Charity workers say that far from being a choice, the recent sharp rise in rough sleeping and the numbers stuck in temporary accommodation is the result of a chronic shortage of affordable housing and a cost of living crisis that is driving people from their homes.
Recent research by Crisis and real estate website Zoopla found that only 4 per cent of properties in England were affordable at government-set housing allowance rates, which have been frozen since 2020. This figure drops to 2 per cent for available rentals in London.
“Everyone who is in a tent is there because they have no other option,” Albanese said.
The Home Office declined to confirm whether Braverman’s proposals to restrict the use of tents were still under consideration. It said only that “details on future legislation” would be forthcoming soon, and that the aim of policy was to ensure “vulnerable individuals on the street can be directed to the support they need, while cracking down on conduct that is anti-social”.
Earlier this month, ministers also revived plans to proscribe “no-fault” evictions, where tenants are thrown out of rental accommodation at short notice and without explanation. This is one measure that could help staunch the recent surge in homelessness.
But with another hand the government is fanning fires, according to councils and charities. The Big Issue magazine, which supports homeless people, said a recent Home Office decision to cut the duration of supported accommodation for asylum seekers after their claims are processed from 56 days to seven risked driving as many as 6,900 more people on to the streets by the end of the year.
Emma Haddad, chief executive of St Mungo’s, a London-based charity, said that as well as a growing number of asylum seekers, outreach workers were finding an unprecedented number of people made homeless by soaring rents.
“We are finding people you wouldn’t have found on streets — not those with a long history of trauma or mental health issues, but those who had a house and a job and quite often still have a job but can’t hold a roof over their head,” she said.
The Home Office cited a string of steps that the government has taken to boost the supply of emergency accommodation and support such people at risk of ending up on the street. It has also, it said, given local authorities more than £1bn over three years to prevent evictions and offer financial support for people to find new homes.
Some 119 council leaders wrote to chancellor Jeremy Hunt last week, saying the funding was inadequate.
Long term, charities said the solution would be to invest in a new generation of social housing for people on low incomes. Ever since the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government first allowed council tenants to acquire their homes, the stock of social housing in England has been in decline — falling by 14,100 only last year, according to Deborah Garvie, policy manager at Shelter, the housing advocacy group. In some parts of the country, she said, children now spend an entire childhood on waiting lists.
Charities said in the short term Hunt had an opportunity in his Autumn Statement to start clearing the bottlenecks in emergency and temporary accommodation by raising the housing allowances provided to people on low incomes to reflect huge recent increases in private rent.
“It’s not rocket science. If you can afford a bigger percentage of homes available, you are more likely to find one. You can’t just magic up a home that is affordable on housing benefit,” said Garvie.
When I was 15 I ran away from my home in order to escape an abusive home situation. In the following years I lived in two seperate hostels where I received assistance and support on independent living, education, employment, and my transition into adulthood.
Fast forward to today, neither of those two hostels exist. They had to close not long after the Conservatives were voted in in 2010, and they subsequently had their funding slashed or withdrawn entirely. The young people like me who were previously reliant on these schemes haven’t disappeared. To the contrary, as poverty, economic and social instability has increased, so have their numbers, only now they have nowhere to go.
I really believe that, had I not had access to these schemes when I needed them, I would have killed myself, and so I often think about all the young people who’ve had their live irreparably altered because of the tories.
Maybe they should just choose a different lifestyle?
Anecdotal, but I want to share it somewhere at least.
I had a hardly used double mattress and bed frame, easy to take apart and put together, plus sheets. I called my local council, who don’t run homeless programs of any sort, it’s all done by charities. Spoke to about 15 charities, all saying they couldn’t take the bed even if I dropped it at the door. I spoke to housing providers, groups in different areas a few hours out from me. No one would or could accept the bed. I had people on the phone laughing with me at the absurdity, restrictions or no way to facilitate the bed or work out where it can go. I spoke to a charity for abused women with kids, they have some rooms, they needed things like this, but for some reason I was told they weren’t allowed to accept it – even after clarifying that they did need it. All the charities that take furniture and sell it wanted the bed, why couldn’t I skip a step and simply give someone a fucking bed?
Ended up speaking to a church in a different part of the city, somehow found them online. The pastor had a family that just moved here with nothing, so the bed was dropped off.
Each step of the way I saw a failed system. Hard to navigate websites, impossible phone lines. Imagine having to do this shit in an emergency situation. I’m here with a bed fit for a family in a difficult situation, literally can’t give it away.
I wonder if dorms/pods will become a thing? Like more efficient HMO’s?
It feels like we’re going back to the old times like you’d see in a fucking Victorian era-theme film.
People all living in the same family home because nobody can afford to move out, lots of street gangs and people sleeping on the street.
6 comments
**by William Wallis**
There was a time during the pandemic when charity workers dared to hope that the most visible, traumatic aspect of homelessness could be banished from England once and for all.
In just two months in early 2020, the government initiative “Everyone In” had ensured the provision of emergency accommodation to nearly 15,000 people. Rough sleepers were disappearing off the streets.
But hopes this kindled that ministers would honour their manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping altogether by 2024 are fading fast. A resurgence this autumn of cardboard shelters in shop doorways and “tent cities” in public spaces instead reflects stubborn shortcomings in housing and support services.
As of March, the month for which the most recent government data is available, the number of English households in precarious temporary accommodation stood at 104,510 — a 10 per cent annual increase that is threatening to bankrupt local councils. A record 131,000 children were affected. Accounts from non-governmental organisations and local authorities suggest the situation has steadily worsened through the year.
Meanwhile, 4,068 people were rough sleeping just in London from July to September, according to figures commissioned by the Mayor’s office — a rise of nearly 25 per cent on the previous quarter that underscores the severity of the crisis looming this winter.
“It is people being forced into homelessness for the first time, not only people who have experienced it before,” said Francesca Albanese, director of policy and social change at Crisis, the national charity for homelessness. She described a social safety net that is overflowing all the way from emergency night shelters to bed and breakfasts and council flats.
Home secretary Suella Braverman last week sparked a furious backlash with proposals to ban homeless people from pitching tents in urban areas. She later described sleeping rough as a “lifestyle choice”.
Charity workers say that far from being a choice, the recent sharp rise in rough sleeping and the numbers stuck in temporary accommodation is the result of a chronic shortage of affordable housing and a cost of living crisis that is driving people from their homes.
Recent research by Crisis and real estate website Zoopla found that only 4 per cent of properties in England were affordable at government-set housing allowance rates, which have been frozen since 2020. This figure drops to 2 per cent for available rentals in London.
“Everyone who is in a tent is there because they have no other option,” Albanese said.
The Home Office declined to confirm whether Braverman’s proposals to restrict the use of tents were still under consideration. It said only that “details on future legislation” would be forthcoming soon, and that the aim of policy was to ensure “vulnerable individuals on the street can be directed to the support they need, while cracking down on conduct that is anti-social”.
Earlier this month, ministers also revived plans to proscribe “no-fault” evictions, where tenants are thrown out of rental accommodation at short notice and without explanation. This is one measure that could help staunch the recent surge in homelessness.
But with another hand the government is fanning fires, according to councils and charities. The Big Issue magazine, which supports homeless people, said a recent Home Office decision to cut the duration of supported accommodation for asylum seekers after their claims are processed from 56 days to seven risked driving as many as 6,900 more people on to the streets by the end of the year.
Emma Haddad, chief executive of St Mungo’s, a London-based charity, said that as well as a growing number of asylum seekers, outreach workers were finding an unprecedented number of people made homeless by soaring rents.
“We are finding people you wouldn’t have found on streets — not those with a long history of trauma or mental health issues, but those who had a house and a job and quite often still have a job but can’t hold a roof over their head,” she said.
The Home Office cited a string of steps that the government has taken to boost the supply of emergency accommodation and support such people at risk of ending up on the street. It has also, it said, given local authorities more than £1bn over three years to prevent evictions and offer financial support for people to find new homes.
Some 119 council leaders wrote to chancellor Jeremy Hunt last week, saying the funding was inadequate.
Long term, charities said the solution would be to invest in a new generation of social housing for people on low incomes. Ever since the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government first allowed council tenants to acquire their homes, the stock of social housing in England has been in decline — falling by 14,100 only last year, according to Deborah Garvie, policy manager at Shelter, the housing advocacy group. In some parts of the country, she said, children now spend an entire childhood on waiting lists.
Charities said in the short term Hunt had an opportunity in his Autumn Statement to start clearing the bottlenecks in emergency and temporary accommodation by raising the housing allowances provided to people on low incomes to reflect huge recent increases in private rent.
“It’s not rocket science. If you can afford a bigger percentage of homes available, you are more likely to find one. You can’t just magic up a home that is affordable on housing benefit,” said Garvie.
When I was 15 I ran away from my home in order to escape an abusive home situation. In the following years I lived in two seperate hostels where I received assistance and support on independent living, education, employment, and my transition into adulthood.
Fast forward to today, neither of those two hostels exist. They had to close not long after the Conservatives were voted in in 2010, and they subsequently had their funding slashed or withdrawn entirely. The young people like me who were previously reliant on these schemes haven’t disappeared. To the contrary, as poverty, economic and social instability has increased, so have their numbers, only now they have nowhere to go.
I really believe that, had I not had access to these schemes when I needed them, I would have killed myself, and so I often think about all the young people who’ve had their live irreparably altered because of the tories.
Maybe they should just choose a different lifestyle?
Anecdotal, but I want to share it somewhere at least.
I had a hardly used double mattress and bed frame, easy to take apart and put together, plus sheets. I called my local council, who don’t run homeless programs of any sort, it’s all done by charities. Spoke to about 15 charities, all saying they couldn’t take the bed even if I dropped it at the door. I spoke to housing providers, groups in different areas a few hours out from me. No one would or could accept the bed. I had people on the phone laughing with me at the absurdity, restrictions or no way to facilitate the bed or work out where it can go. I spoke to a charity for abused women with kids, they have some rooms, they needed things like this, but for some reason I was told they weren’t allowed to accept it – even after clarifying that they did need it. All the charities that take furniture and sell it wanted the bed, why couldn’t I skip a step and simply give someone a fucking bed?
Ended up speaking to a church in a different part of the city, somehow found them online. The pastor had a family that just moved here with nothing, so the bed was dropped off.
Each step of the way I saw a failed system. Hard to navigate websites, impossible phone lines. Imagine having to do this shit in an emergency situation. I’m here with a bed fit for a family in a difficult situation, literally can’t give it away.
I wonder if dorms/pods will become a thing? Like more efficient HMO’s?
It feels like we’re going back to the old times like you’d see in a fucking Victorian era-theme film.
People all living in the same family home because nobody can afford to move out, lots of street gangs and people sleeping on the street.
Brutal.