Today's G2 - Guardian takes stock of England's homeless crisis

[Tony Gosling]

England's Homelessness crisis: the train crash behind the housing bubble

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/25/homelessness-crisis-england-perfect-storm

Last year, 112,070 people declared themselves 
homeless in England – a 26% increase in four 
years. At the same time, the number of people 
sleeping rough in London grew by 75% to a 
staggering 6,437. Why? A £7bn cut in housing 
benefit, welfare reforms and a huge lack of affordable housing
    * 
<http://www.theguardian.com/profile/jonhenley>Jon 
Henley - 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>The 
Guardian, Wednesday 25 June 2014 19.37 BST
There was a time not so long ago – 10 years, even 
five – when it seemed quite reasonable for 
workers in the 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/homelessness>homelessness 
sector to suggest that the end of rough sleeping 
was in sight. So realistic an objective was it, 
in fact, that all the leading candidates in 
London's mayoral elections of 2008 pledged to 
achieve it before they left office.

Nobody talks in those terms now. Tomorrow, the 
<http://www.broadwaylondon.org/CHAIN.html>Combined 
Homeless and Information Network (Chain), a 
database compiled by those who work with rough 
sleepers and the street population in the 
capital, publishes its annual report, the most 
detailed and comprehensive source of information 
available on those seen sleeping rough by outreach teams in 2013-14.

The report is almost certain to show another 
significant increase, says Leslie Morphy, chief 
executive of <http://www.crisis.org.uk/>Crisis, 
the national charity for single homeless people – 
continuing an alarming upward trend that has, 
over the past four years, seen the number of 
people sleeping rough on London's streets at some 
point in the year swell by 75%, to 6,437 in 2012-13.

The evidence certainly seems to point that way: 
in its most recent quarterly report, published in 
early April this year, Chain reported that, 
compared with the same period in 2011-12, the 
total number of people sleeping rough in the 
capital had risen by 8%, new rough sleepers by 
12%, and intermittent rough sleepers had increased by 11%.

Nor is the phenomenon confined to the capital. 
The government's 
<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rough-sleeping-in-england-autumn-2013>Department 
for Communities and Local Government estimated 
that across England, 2,414 people slept rough on 
any one night last year, a rise of 36% since 2010 
(and, because the estimate is based on 
single-night street snapshots, most likely a fraction of the actual total).

And rough sleepers are, themselves, a small 
fraction of the total homeless population. Local 
councils have a statutory duty to house some – 
such as pregnant women, parents with dependent 
children and people considered, for a variety of 
reasons, vulnerable (single people rarely 
qualify). Last year, 112,070 people in England 
approached their council as homeless, a 26% 
increase on the figure four years ago.

Beyond these are tens of thousands of single 
homeless people in hostels – there are currently 
just fewer than 40,000 hostel beds in England, a 
figure that has fallen by around 10% in four 
years due to spending cuts – and countless 
thousands more who make up what is known as the 
"hidden homeless": people existing, more or less 
out of sight, in B&Bs, squats, or on the floors 
and sofas of friends and family members.

No one knows exactly how many hidden homeless 
there are, but 
the<http://www.crisis.org.uk/pages/homelessnessmonitor.html>Homelessness 
Monitor, an exhaustive, ongoing five-year study 
by 
<http://www.theguardian.com/society/housing>housingpolicy 
academics from Heriot-Watt and York universities, 
has found evidence to suggest that one in 10 
adults has experienced homelessness at some point 
in their lives, a fifth of them during the past 
five years. "We are witnessing," says Morphy, 
"what amounts to a perfect storm: a combination 
of the shortage of affordable housing and 
government policies – 
<http://www.theguardian.com/politics/welfare>welfare 
reforms and cuts in housing benefit – that are 
weakening the housing safety net for those who 
are in greatest need. It's a grim picture, and it 
will get worse before it gets better."

Until really quite recently, though, the picture 
wasn't that grim at all. Rising steeply from a 
postwar low of just six people found sleeping on 
London's streets in 1949, homelessness first 
crossed the national consciousness as a serious 
concern in the mid-60s, when Ken Loach's gritty, 
still-potent BBC TV drama Cathy Come Home – 
watched, on first broadcast, by fully a quarter 
of the UK population – brought its realities 
forcefully home to a shocked nation.

Three of Britain's leading present-day 
homelessness campaign groups – Crisis, Shelter 
and Centrepoint – were formed within a year of 
Loach's film airing on the BBC, and Britain's 
earliest homeless persons legislation, the 
Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, came into force 
in 1977, giving some housing rights to certain 
categories of people for the first time.

By the 1980s and into the early 1990s, however, 
homelessness was again becoming an issue. A range 
of factors – house-price inflation, rising 
unemployment, a more general increase in the 
number of people with drink, drug and mental 
health problems, a ban on 16- and 17-year-olds 
claiming housing benefits – saw rough sleeping, 
most visibly in London's notorious "cardboard 
cities", on the increase once more.
[]
An eastern European man sleeps rough under a 
flyover on the A13 near Canning Town. Photograph: Teri Pengilley

But the result back then, says Katharine 
Sacks-Jones, head of policy and campaigns at 
Crisis, was "a concerted series of programmes, 
government-funded, government-led", to address 
the problem. Housing was earmarked, health and 
employment support increased, the Rough Sleepers 
and Homeless Mentally Ill initiatives launched to 
fund more beds and more services. A project 
called Places of Change replaced older 
dormitories with smaller, more supportive, single-room hostels.

"There was recognition, for the first time," 
Sacks-Jones says, "that a roof was important, but 
not enough on its own – and a gradual shift to a 
more preventative model. A lot of very real 
progress was made, particularly on rough 
sleeping. Numbers fell significantly, and then 
stayed flat, until ... well, until this recession hit."

The turning point, Sacks-Jones says, was 2010. 
"That's when all forms of homelessness started to 
rise; when you got this toxic mix of 
unemployment, underemployment – people struggling 
on low incomes – and housing unaffordability, 
plus benefit reforms effectively breaking the 
housing safety net that has, until now, been a key part of the welfare state."

What tips a person into homelessness? Besides 
structural, society-wide causes – lack of 
affordable housing, unemployment, poverty, the 
the benefits system – individuals fall into 
homelessness for complex and usually overlapping 
reasons, often after an accumulation of events.

Most men, according to Crisis research, cite 
relationship breakdown, substance misuse, and 
leaving an institution such as care, prison or 
hospital. Single women, who represent about a 
quarter of the clients of homelessness services, 
are more likely to find themselves homeless as a 
result of physical or mental illness, or after fleeing violent relationships.

Some categories of people are more likely than 
others to be 
affected.<http://www.crisis.org.uk/pages/homeless-diff-groups.html>Migrants, 
for example, may lack support networks of friends 
and family, familiarity with English and 
knowledge of how the benefits system works, and 
are vulnerable: people from the east European 
accession states – including Poland, the Czech 
Republic, the Baltic states, Hungary, Romania and 
Bulgaria – make up nearly 30% of London's rough sleepers.

Young adults, similarly, are at greater risk: the 
number sleeping rough in London has more than 
doubled in three years; 8% of 16- to 24-year-olds 
report having been recently homeless. Two-thirds 
of homeless people say alcohol or drug misuse 
contributed to their situation; nearly 60% have 
been unemployed for three or more years; 37% have 
no formal educational or professional 
qualifications; a quarter have been in local 
authority care; nearly as many in prison.

Whatever their individual circumstances, lack of 
affordable housing constitutes one half of the 
homelessness equation. Underscoring that reality, 
the single biggest cause of statutory 
homelessness in London – that is, homelessness 
recognised by a local authority and eligible for 
housing – is now the ending of a private tenancy.

Housing is, famously, an issue that successive 
governments have failed to address, and although 
Morphy reckons the solution is "really not that 
complicated", it will clearly take "a brave 
government, and planning that looks beyond a 
five-year government term" to tackle Britain's 
decades-long, ever-widening gap between housing supply and demand.

But the situation right now is particularly 
acute. In the recession of the early 90s, Morphy 
notes, homelessness actually fell – because while 
the number of repossessions was high, housing 
costs subsequently fell, and access to social 
housing was freed up. This one is very different.

"We're in a completely different economic 
situation," she says. "House prices, certainly in 
the south of England, have not fallen. A lot of 
people who would not normally be housed in the 
private rental sector are in there now. So 
there's less and less availability – and, of 
course, a very significant shortage of social, affordable and stable housing."

Not surprisingly, then, with owner-occupation out 
of reach for people on low incomes and social 
housing out of bounds for most without dependent 
children, last year, for the first time in very 
many years, the private rented sector accounted 
for more UK households than the social rented sector: 18% against 17%.

And the problem with that, Morphy says, is that 
the private rental sector is "a market, with the 
people who need our services most at the bottom. 
It needs far, far more regulation – local 
authorities can now fulfil their duty to homeless 
people by rehousing them in the private rented 
sector, with none of the security of a long-term social tenancy."

The 2011 Localism Act, which allowed this move 
towards less secure tenancies and rents closer to 
market values, is not the only piece of recent 
government lawmaking that Crisis and other 
homelessness campaigners object to. The Welfare 
Reform Act and its secondary legislation, says 
Sacks-Jones, has "massively restricted the 
support people can get with housing".

Overall, housing benefit has been slashed by 
£7bn, Crisis says. Leaving aside the bedroom tax, 
which affects social housing, the Local Housing 
Allowance – a form of housing benefit – has also 
been cut: claimants under the age of 35 now 
mostly get a lower rate, the Shared Accommodation 
Rate, which will pay only enough for a room in a shared property.

That's highly problematic, Sacks-Jones says, 
first because there is not a great deal of shared 
accommodation available – our housing market 
isn't built that way – and second, because shared 
accommodation is, in any event, only rarely 
suitable for particularly vulnerable people.

Add to that swingeing cuts in council tax 
benefits, caps on Local Housing Allowance rates, 
and restrictions on the Social Fund, which 
previously helped homeless people to stump up 
rent in advance, or pay for a bed, fridge and 
other essentials, and the picture gets tougher still.

The other half of this toxic homelessness 
equation, then, is welfare reforms (or, depending 
where you stand, cuts). Both Sacks-Jones and 
Morphy are at pains to point out that Crisis does 
not oppose the government's stated aim of 
simplifying welfare and making sure that it pays 
to work. But it and other campaigners have 
serious reservations about the implications for homelessness.

"The problem with universal credit," says Morphy, 
"and particularly the housing element, is that it 
may be fine for most of the population, but it 
isn't for the rest, those who need far more 
careful calibration. And cuts aren't just 
affecting individuals, they're hitting 
homelessness services – over half have now seen 
their budget cut." As a result, says Sacks-Jones, 
"everything but the basics is now getting cut 
back. Lots of specialist ancillary services are 
going: a hostel may stay open, but it'll lose its 
employment worker, or its mental- health consultant."

Needless to say, for those who find themselves 
homeless, the experience can be isolating, 
destructive, devastating. 
<http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/factfile_Full.pdf>Up 
to 70% of homeless people have some form of 
mental-health problem – as a cause of their 
situation, a consequence, or sometimes both – and 
two-thirds have physical health problems such as 
bronchial and wound infections, exacerbated by 
the fact that homeless people are around 40 times 
less likely than the rest of the population to 
see a doctor. The average age of death for a homeless person is just 47.

So what does the future hold? Morphy, while 
worried by recent evidence – 
<http://www.natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/british-social-attitudes/>in 
the British Social Attitudes survey, for instance 
– of hardening attitudes towards benefits 
claimants and particularly concerned about the 
fate awaiting the under 25s, who could soon be 
deprived of many of the benefits previously 
available to them even under a Labour government, 
remains convinced the solution to homelessness 
"is not rocket science. We need to think 
longer-term, allocate resources more effectively, 
and pick up earlier on people in difficulty."

Sacks-Jones is somewhat less optimistic. "It will 
depend what happens with welfare," she says, "and 
attitudes are toughening, across the board. That 
will be a huge factor. And with housing ... 
Someone is going to have to bite the bullet on 
housing, and things might now be getting to the 
point where it becomes a voting issue. But 
speaking honestly? It's not a pretty picture."
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