Debbie Thomas reflects on the journey to legislative change so far.
The draft Homelessness and Social Housing Allocations Bill received a warm welcome from Crisis and other homelessness charities in Wales when it was published earlier this summer. Amidst a difficult environment, the Bill provides a beacon of hope.
The most recent statistics show more than 13,600 people in Wales sought assistance for homelessness between April to September 2024. Every day at Crisis, we see people who are struggling with all the barriers and trauma that comes with not having a stable place to call home.
We also know housing services, councils and frontline professionals across Wales are feeling under pressure. The latest Homelessness Monitor for Wales was clear that services feel they are in a constant crisis mode as they battle high caseloads.
The new draft Bill represents an opportunity to take bold action so that we can turn the tide on homelessness. By shifting homelessness prevention upstream, ushering in new duties for wider public sector organisations, and ensuring people are more able to access support, this legislation holds potential to make a huge difference.
While change can be difficult, particularly when services are overstretched, if passed and appropriately resourced this Bill will represent a milestone in Wales’s journey towards making homelessness rare, brief and non-recurrent.
It’s been a long road
The road to reach this landmark draft bill has been long. The Housing Wales Act (2014) made many improvements to homelessness support in Wales. However, a wealth of research – including the Public Services Ombudsman Report on Homelessness and the 2020 review of priority need – showed that the current law continues to shut many out of the support they need.
Services rallied around a ‘no one left out’ approach to homelessness during the pandemic, while Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru made a joint commitment to work towards ending homelessness and to review homelessness legislation within their then-cooperation agreement.
The subsequent Welsh Government national action plan on ending homelessness, committed to making radical cultural shifts to ensure homelessness can become rare, brief and unrepeated. It acknowledged that there are many factors to ending homelessness – including the creation of more social homes – but identified the need for legislative reform as key in creating a framework for a new approach to homelessness support.
And in 2022, an Expert Review panel – convened by Crisis – was established to explore just that. This panel included representation from across the sector – from local authorities, housing associations, third sector and academia – and took a deep dive into how legislative change could help to end homelessness in Wales. It reviewed research from Wales and across the globe and conducted a wide-ranging stakeholder engagement programme. Crucially, it listened to the voices of more than 300 people with lived experience of homelessness. The message the panel received was clear – change was very much needed.
The panel worked on a package of recommended reforms, taking on board and balancing views from across different stakeholders. At its heart was the need to shift towards a preventative and trauma-informed approach to homelessness.
On World Homeless Day 2023, the Welsh Government published its White Paper on Ending Homelessness, which set out its blue print for legislative change and broadly reflected the package of reforms outlined by the panel.
Between then and now, the Welsh Government has undertaken further consultation on the White Paper and further shaped its proposals for a new law.
There’s no doubt about it – this anticipated law has been a while in the making, but it forms an integral part of the journey to end homelessness in Wales.
Why do we need this change of direction?
Legislative change has a key role to play in setting direction. And there’s overwhelming evidence for the need to change direction in how we approach homelessness in Wales.
The recently published Homelessness Monitor Wales 2025 indicates that homelessness has been rising more steeply than in other parts of Great Britain. It projects that, if we do not seek change, homelessness will rise by a further 24 per cent by 2041.
Besides the immeasurable human cost and trauma associated with rising levels of homelessness, this also places pressure on services. We already know that housing services across the country are struggling with workloads and temporary accommodation bills of £99 million place mounting pressure on local authorities. We simply cannot afford not to act.
A change in direction is needed to ensure that we can reduce homelessness levels and reinforce the commitments in the national homelessness action plan to rapid-rehousing and a trauma-informed approach. We must focus on driving homelessness prevention upstream, ensure that person-centred support is available as and when people need it, and create a wider public sector approach to ending homelessness.
What makes this landmark legislation?
It is precisely this emphasis on person-centred support and upstream prevention that makes this legislation so transformative.
Of course, no Bill is perfect, and there are elements from the white paper that Crisis would have liked to have seen in the draft Bill that have not made it through (in particular the extended exemptions to local connection to people).
However, there is no doubt that the Bill contains hugely transformative and significant changes that can propel Wales forward on our journey towards ending homelessness. These include:
- Getting people at risk of homelessness help much earlier – so that councils offer support when a person is at risk of becoming homeless within six months
- Placing new duties on wider public services so that they work together to help people facing homelessness, because homelessness is not a housing issue alone
- Setting out to end the current laws on priority need and intentionality which lock people out of critical support
- Introducing new powers to help secure social homes for those who need it most, including people experiencing homelessness
- Offering continued assistance where people who have experienced homelessness might otherwise be at risk of losing their new home
- Introducing prevention, support and accommodation plans to help bring transparency for people experiencing homelessness.
And the journey ahead….
At the moment, the draft law is just that – a draft. The Bill will now undergo significant scrutiny from the Finance Committee and the Local Government and Housing Committee, as well as the wider Senedd. As it passes through scrutiny, it may get tweaked and adapted, or even – and I sincerely hope this is not the case – dropped. Here at Crisis, we’ll be looking closely at the wording of the bill and calling on the Senedd to press ahead with giving the transformative changes in the Bill the seal of approval.
We’ll be looking closely at the all-important accompanying guidance as it is developed. And we’ll be looking for more detail on the transition process. We want to know when key changes, such as the abolition of intentionality and priority need, will be introduced. The sooner these changes happen, the sooner we can break down these barriers to critical support.
Crucially, we’ll also be calling for the Bill to be adequately resourced, implemented and reviewed.
Looking back to the national plan to end homelessness in Wales, it’s clear that this legislative change is one part- albeit a fundamental and critical part – of the puzzle in ending homelessness. For this legislation to reach its full potential, we must also hit the gas pedal on creating social homes. We must invest in training to deliver the new legislation effectively and invest in the workforce.
Change is always hard, especially in difficult times, but the changes outlined in this legislation are an essential part of ensuring we move beyond difficult times. If passed, this legislation would help to steer and accelerate Wales’s journey towards a dream destination – a Wales where homelessness truly is rare, brief and unrepeated.
Debbie Thomas is head of policy and communications at Crisis