Just before the Coronavirus crisis began, Welsh Government accepted in principle all of the recommendations of the Homelessness Action Group. Jon Sparkes looks to the future.
As I write this article, large parts of the world are in the grip of the coronavirus outbreak. In these uncertain times there has been renewed media and public interest in homelessness. The importance of having a roof over our heads is really front of our minds as we consider the risks the virus poses. The Welsh Government initial announcement was reassuring and clearly heeded the public health need for self-contained accommodation with support, access to sanitation, and a particular effort to help people with no recourse to public funds.
The whole situation adds extra pressure to people who are without a stable and safe home, whether you are living on the street, sharing a sofa in a communal area, or in a hostel with other people. Those pressures that existed before the virus are still there, including housing benefit payments not covering the cost of rents, a shortage of truly affordable housing supply, and a lack of multi-agency support that people need to avoid homelessness. Whether intentionally or not, government approaches and policies at a Wales and UK level have either helped or hindered homelessness. However, there is nothing inevitable about people losing their homes.
The Welsh Government has stated clearly that homelessness is a whole public services issue rather than simply being about housing. The minister for housing and local government, Julie James AM, announced that she accepted in principle all of the recommendations of the Action Group on ending homelessness that I chair. She committed to put in place a plan to end homelessness in Wales, which is great news and the right response to the evidence and solutions the Action Group has presented. When the Welsh Government announced extra measures to help, including up to £10 million funding, it also reassured people that its goal to end homelessness in Wales remains but actions to put in place a plan might be delayed by the outbreak.
This is a very high ambition and, to be clear, no one is saying that people will never lose their home again. Ending homelessness means everyone housed in safe and secure accommodation with all the benefits this brings to them and to wider society. While there is absolutely no room to compromise on the ambition of ending homelessness, there is a mature and honest conversation needed about the pace of change and the funding and support needed to help public services do it.
The Action Group’s main report published last month set out how we can make homelessness rare, brief and non-repeated. That is, to prevent as many people as possible from losing their homes, to respond quickly when people are forced into homelessness, and to respond effectively so that any experience of homelessness is a one-off.
The minister set the Action Group a challenging timescale of nine months to answer the questions on ending homelessness, tackling rough sleeping, and specific measures needed in local areas and regions. We met as a group mainly in person roughly every month, considering the evidence, our experience as 13 people committed to ending homelessness, and hearing updates from our consultations with people who have lived experience of homelessness and with people working to end homelessness, mainly in housing and homelessness roles. I was particularly glad that both consultations gave us a high level of support for the recommendations but also some specific changes to our draft recommendations that we made before finalising the report.
While we accepted that homelessness is not just a housing issue, the question of housing is behind every case of homelessness. The answers the Action Group gave are quite simple and they are to maximise the amount of homelessness prevention that happens, and at a much earlier point than we currently do; to put in place rapid rehousing support to help people who do lose their homes; and to support workforces and people with lived experience to end homelessness. In practice, however, there is a lot of detail in the delivery and I’ll come back to this issue later in the article.
Drawing from the best academic evidence on preventing and ending homelessness, the Action Group’s recommended framework has different levels of prevention: universal, targeted, crisis, emergency and recovery:
Universal prevention is about how to put in place the conditions across society where homelessness is rarer. This includes establishing a legal right to adequate housing and all the practical steps needed to deliver this right, including a bigger supply of genuinely affordable homes (including social housing) and support to access and sustain people in tenancies. It also means dealing some of the root causes of homelessness, particularly linked to poverty, and making sure public services are funded and working together to deliver the same outcomes for ending homelessness. The importance of funding and supporting workforces to do this was a clear message in our consultation from people working in housing and homelessness.
Targeted prevention means using evidence to identify the cohorts of people most at risk of homelessness and putting in place the support needed to help these groups. We know a lot about these groups, which include people leaving the secure estate, care experienced young people, those experiencing domestic abuse, people who are LGBTQ+, and people presenting to Job Centres Plus for support and advice. Part of the solution is making sure that services for the broader population know the best ways to help people and be aware of people’s experiences and characteristics. But it also means putting in place more tailored help to make sure that homelessness is prevented more effectively for these groups. A key challenge here is ending discharge from the state into homelessness, which happens all too often from our NHS, care system, and prisons.
Wales has a very proud record in crisis prevention, pioneering the homelessness prevention and relief duties that local councils have. These duties have since inspired similar changes in England. However, as the Action Group report makes clear, we cannot end homelessness if we just increase the amount of crisis prevention. We have to also reduce the number of people threatened with homelessness in the first place, which is why universal and targeted prevention support is so important. The Action Group also recommends an extension of the current 56-day homelessness prevention and relief window to 6-months and to cover a broader range of public services.
There will, of course, be times when we simply cannot prevent someone from losing their home for whatever reason. This is why rapid rehousing is so important in making homelessness brief and a one-off and the approach is better in many cases than relying on crisis, emergency and recovery work. Again, Wales has some good early experience in scaling-up Housing First for people with complex support needs but that is just one element of the rapid rehousing services and broader system change needed. It is important to stress that there is absolutely a place for good quality temporary and emergency accommodation for people in a rapid rehousing system. We just should not rely on this as the default response. In Scotland, which is a little further ahead on rapid rehousing, local councils are agreeing five-year transition plans with the Scottish Government to scale up their rapid rehousing services and scale down reliance on temporary accommodation.
Our main report tried wherever possible to be specific about the changes needed to end homelessness. There were two final questions the Action Group addressed after delivering the main report, which were about more detail on rapid rehousing and how joined-up local and regional partnerships can deliver an end to homelessness. We had a long and tricky conversation in the Action Group where we accepted that no existing planning and strategy structure is the right one at the moment to take this forward in local places. But we did agree that with a renewed brief and support from the Welsh Government, some of the existing structures could be adapted to provide the right forum for local services to plan and deliver the work.
While timescales have been moved back by the urgent and necessary coronavirus response, I am looking forward to seeing the Welsh Government taking the recommendations forward with partners in a clear and properly-funded action plan.
Key Action Group recommendations
Public services
- Involving people with lived experience in every aspect of designing, delivering and evaluating services.
- Supporting workforces, particularly in housing and homelessness, including a greater focus on work-based learning and recognition of skills.
- A public services outcomes framework for ending homelessness.
- More help for non-UK nationals at risk of homelessness.
Homelessness prevention
- A new legal right to ‘adequate housing’ as set out by the United Nations.
- Changing UK welfare policy to ensure it prevents more people from losing their home.
- Targeted help for people more at risk of losing their home.
Rapid rehousing
- Five-year transition plans agreed between local councils and partners to change to a rapid rehousing approach in all areas for people experiencing homelessness.
Jon Sparkes is chair of the Homelessness Action Group and chief executive of Crisis