Support services don’t attract rough sleepers

That is the provocative finding of new research into people who sleep rough.

Researchers interviewed both people who design and deliver services for people sleeping rough and scores of people sleeping rough. They found that, contrary to received opinion,

“the people sleeping rough that were interviewed reported having no knowledge of the types of services that were available in Westminster. None of those interviewed reported knowing of any homelessness prevention or rough sleeping services in the area before arriving, and were only made aware of services once outreach teams had connected with them.

A man sleeping rough in Westminster put it like this:

“I was here [Westminster] for about a month before I knew anything about The Passage and St Mungo’s. I didn’t know anything.”

Or expressing a similar sentiment, someone sleeping rough in Camden said:

““[From losing employment and long-term accommodation] it was a couple of weeks before I started sleeping rough. When I had money, I was getting hotels and hostels and stuff like that and food but it’s expensive in London […] It was by chance that I was found by Routes off The Streets as I was rough sleeping up by Euston, but I didn’t really know what the process was.”

The situation is not restricted to London. They found the same thing in Birmingham, namely that:

“Many people experiencing homelessness, or at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping, in Birmingham are unaware of services designed to help them maintain existing or secure new stable housing and access vital support.”

A naïve conclusion from this would be that one way to reduce the number of people sleeping rough would be to make sure information about support services is better publicised. That’s not wrong but it’s not right either.

The researchers also found that many people who sleep rough don’t trust services. They may have had bad experiences with government services in the past or may be convinced that the services will be controlling, judgemental or simply ineffective.

The researchers quote someone sleeping rough in Birmingham who said

“I’ve been trying to get [the Council] to help me for two years and I’m fed up of trying now – I’ll find my own place”

Spending more money promoting services that are not trusted by some of the target group would mean a partial improvement in the situation, at best.

Perhaps it’s worth pausing and asking why mistrust of services which are designed to support people sleeping rough is so common. Could it be how these specific services are designed and delivered? Or is it a more general issue with the design and delivery of all services, not just those aimed at supporting people who are sleeping rough?

Click to access Flow_of_rough_sleeping_case_study_report.pdf

More and more households are experiencing homelessness

Official statistics released today confirm what those of us working in homelessness services are seeing on the ground: we are seeing a sustained and worrying increase in all forms of homelessness.

This is a national issue and requires a comprehensive national solution. The best that local authorities and agencies can do is to stem the tide until there is a significant change in the overall approach to preventing people from experiencing homelessness.

42,690 households were judged to be homeless by cash strapped local councils in the third quarter of 2023, a 9% increase in a year. This is not a blip. We are on course for over 150,000 households to be assessed as homeless in 2023, compared with c.120,000 in 2018, an increase of nearly 30%.

109,000 households were living in temporary accommodation at the end of the third quarter of 2023, a 28% increase since the beginning of 2019. We know that many households end up staying for years in unsuitable, poor quality temporary accommodation, under constant threat of eviction, often far away from their social networks and support services.

Most worryingly of all, the most recent statistics for the number of people sleeping rough in England show another year on year increase. 27% more people were seen sleeping rough during the 2023 snapshot survey than in 2022. We are nearly up to the peak levels of 2017 and 2018. Almost all of the reductions that were achieved during the pandemic have been lost.

It is a dire state with little room for optimism. The increased LHA rate and increases in grant for services may slightly improve the situation, but it seems highly unlikely that the government will meet it’s manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping in 2024.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2023#:~:text=There%20were%203%2C898%20people%20estimated,since%20the%20peak%20in%202017.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness

What causes homelessness?

The biggest cause of homelessness in England is not being unable to afford the rent. The main reason that people end up as homelessness is the breakdown of relationships and it’s not even close.

“Relationship breakdown” could mean anything from fleeing domestic abuse to friends asking you to leave. The chart below shows the different categories the government uses to assess if someone is homeless because of their tenancy ending or a relationship breaking down. The most common reason, accounting for around 1/3 of homelessness, is being asked to leave your accommodation by friends and family.

Homelessness is never simply, and it does not have a single cause. If I were asked to leave my home, I would not become homeless. I could go to a hotel or ask my mum to put me up. There are some people who do not have these options. They are the ones who become homeless.
People who experience homelessness usual a combination of little to no money and no one they can call on who can offer them a place to stay. They’re in a very tough spot.
The initial focus is on getting them out of this spot, ideally by supporting them to find a home but after this a different type of challenge arises. How to ensure that the person does not once again end up in a situation where they have little to no money and no one they can call on who can often them a place to stay for the night?
Traditionally, there has been much more focus on the former rather than the later. Charities and government agencies are used to advising people on how to maximise their income (including claiming benefits or finding work). While there are efforts to support people to build their social networks these often receive far less attention and funding.
That might now be changing. A new report looking at the impact of “housing first” projects found “an increase in positive social networks from the point of entry into Housing First until the end of their third year.”. Although that sounds promising the numbers are still quite low. After the first year 16.5% of people receiving support from a housing first project said they had supportive social networks. This rose to 36.3% after the third year. So around 2/3 of participants did not think they had supportive social networks even after 3 years of intensive support.
This is not surprising. The trauma of sleeping rough (and other traumas that people may have experienced) can result in people finding it harder to build and sustain positive relationships. People may become very aware of risk; they may not trust other people and they may have difficulties communicating clearly and regulating their emotions. People who previously slept on the street may have had terrible relationships with their parents and have no interest in building these relationships back. They may have made friends while they were sleeping rough but may want to stop those relationships when they get their own place.
All of this means that building supportive networks is very challenging.
Even if someone does start taking steps to get to build new relationships, there is a huge amount of stigma and exclusion in our society. I once supported a keen gardener, who had previously slept on the streets, to attend a community gardening project. When we arrived, we were told that he was not welcome because they did not allow people who were intoxicated to take part. He had not had anything to drink but they judged him for his appearance. He felt rejected and excluded and his confidence took an enormous hit.
While this work is hard it is important and should be the focus of investment and research. Areas that are particularly ripe for enquiry include:

• How to prevent relationships from breaking down, for example through mediation
• Which therapeutic interventions help people to be better able to build new relationships
• What community development work can build more inclusive community groups which welcome people with experience of homelessness

A stitch in time saves nine

In many cases households who are threatened with homelessness do not have to experience it. It can be prevented. The right support can ensure that either people stay in their existing home or move to alternative suitable accommodation without experiencing homelessness. Sadly, fewer and fewer households that are threatened with homelessness are getting effective support.

The chart below shows the percentage of households where the Local Authority prevented homelessness (and where they had a duty to prevent homelessness).

Even fewer are supported to stay in their existing homes.

And there a very few examples of cases where the Local Authority successful mediated or advocated so that households that are threatened with eviction are able to stay in their existing homes.

There are lots of reasons for this but it is possible to do a much better job. Several Local Authorities, from Cheshire to Gloucestershire, are much better at preventing homelessness.

Some areas are far better at supporting households to stay in their existing homes

And some do a much better job of mediating with friends, family or landlords, to prevent homelessness.

If the national picture was even half as good as these examples, tens of thousands of people would not experience homelessness or end up in unsuitable temporary accommodation.

All figures are from: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness

People do not move home as much as they used to.

That might sounds surprising since we have all heard stories of people who are forced to move every 6 months due to high rents or other challenges.

However, as the chart below shows, the percentage of households who have moved in the last year in London has been steadily decreasing for the past three decades. This is particularly striking for private renters but true for all tenures.

It’s a similar story if we look at the whole of England. A decade ago, one in nine households had lived in their current home for less than a year but in 2022 one in thirteen households had lived in their current home, a drop of a third.

The situation is far starker for private renters. A decade ago one in three households that were renting privately had lived in their current home for less than a year but in 2022 that had reduced to one in five, a drop of 40%.

On the plus side we all know that moving can be a horrible, stressful experience. However, there are downsides to this change.

If fewer people move then fewer new homes become available, especially given the relatively low level of new homes being built. This in turn makes is harder for people who want to move to move. They simply have fewer options. This means that people are stuck for longer in unsuitable accommodation, for example overcrowded or poorly located for their work or social lives.

There is not a definitive explanation, that I am aware of, for why people seem to be moving less frequently than they did in the past, but the fact that they are is an additional reason to significantly increase the number of new homes being built, so that people who want to move have options available to them.

Homelessness in England in 2023

There are now more people experiencing homelessness in England than there were before the pandemic. Improvements made during the pandemic were temporary and have now largely disappeared.

It is estimated that about 242,000 people experienced homelessness in England in 2022, up from 221,000 in 2020, 224,000 in 2018 and 206,000 in 2012. The chart below shows how the improvements in 2020 have now largely been reversed.

This trend shows no signs of improving and there is every likelihood that the immediate future will see more people experiencing homelessness.

The number of people sleeping rough is still below the pre-pandemic peak but is moving in the wrong direction. Following several years of decline, the number of people seen sleeping rough in England grew in 2022. 3,069 were recorded as sleeping rough in November 2022, 26% more than in 2021.

The numbers sleeping rough in London have been increasing since 2021, with around half of those sleeping on the streets in the capital non-UK nationals.

The number of people in temporary accommodation is at historic highs. More people than ever are in temporary accommodation. Placements have more than doubled over the past 13 years to over 100,000 households in latest figures.  The numbers are shooting up and show now sign of reducing.

Homelessness is increasing because rents and poverty are going up and fewer and fewer social housing tenancies are available.

Many people will experience this through relationships breaking down. Nearly half of all households who were supported by Local Authorities in in 2021/22 were people who were leaving an existing household either because they’d asked to leave by family or friends (28%), or because of relationship breakdown (7%) or domestic abuse (12%).

Things can change. Homelessness is not inevitable. We have seen reductions in the past and we should aim for fewer people to experience homelessness.

Some of this relies on improvements in the economy, for example getting incomes to rise faster than rents. There are also more specific and focused policies which could improve things. Crisis highlight:

• making homelessness households a higher priority for social housing
• increasing the level of LHA to cover the typical level of actual rents
• replicating across the country the work to prevent homelessness that is seen in the highest performing areas

I would add that increasing the number of social housing homes to let (either through supporting people to downsize or building more units) and creating better solutions for non UK nationals to access housing could and should play a significant part in reducing homelessness.

All information is from Crisis’ excellent homelessness monitor: https://www.crisis.org.uk/media/utehvxat/homelessness-monitor-england_report-2023_v11.pdf

The housing report card

Housing in the UK is not getting any better.

• The percentage of people owning their homes has flatlined and more adults are living with their parents
• The standard of far too many privately rented homes is shocking
• More and more people are spending more than a third of their income on housing, driving many households into poverty
• There are more and more overcrowded households in social housing
• The number of people living in temporary accommodation or sleeping on the streets is rising

What’s more there is no clear plan to address most of these challenges. In most areas, we are either experiencing stasis or the situation is getting worse.

Home ownership: Far more people want to own their home than the number of people who actually own their home

• Given a free choice, the vast majority of people would choose to buy accommodation rather than rent. 87% would choose to buy a home (87%) rather than rent (12%).
• Across England and Wales, 62% of households were homeowners, 20% were private renters, and 17% were social renters
• The number of families in England and Wales with adult children living with their parents rose 13.6% between the 2011 Census and Census 2021 to nearly 3.8 million.
• More than 1 in 10 (11.6%) of those aged 30 to 34 years were living with their parents in Census 2021, up from 8.6% a decade earlier.

Verdict: C – treading water (with worrying signs if you look closer)

Quality of housing: there have been few improvements in the quality of housing in recent year

In 2020, close to a quarter of private rented homes (23%) were non-decent, compared with 11% of social rented homes. There has been only minimal improvement in these numbers over the past few years

Verdict: C – little to no improvement and a long way to go

Affordability: More people are spending too much of their income on housing

• 30% of people in households in the private rented sector are spending more than a third of their income on housing costs, compared with 10.9% of social renters and 3.7% of owner-occupiers.
• Private rents started to become less affordable in the 2000s, while social rents have become less affordable since 2010.

• Poverty after housing costs: housing costs continue to push significant numbers of people into poverty.  Around one in six people in the UK are in relative poverty before housing costs. This rises to just over one in five people once housing costs are accounted for.

Verdict: D – more and more households that rent privately are spending more than a third of their income on rent

Overcrowding: More and more overcrowded households

8.1% of households in the social rented sector and 5.3% in the private rented sector were overcrowded in 2021/22.

Verdict: D – The situation is worse now than it was 13 years ago

Temporary accommodation: Dramatic rises show no sign of slowing down

By the end of June 2022 there were almost 95,000 households living in temporary accommodation, a 95% increase since 2011.

Verdict: F the situation is worsening all the time with no clear plan to address the issues

Rough sleeping: after falls during the pandemic there are worrying signs that things are moving in the wrong direction

The number of people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2022 is 3,069, which after 4 years of decreases has risen for the first time since the peak in 2017.

Verdict: D – there is still time to put in place measures to reduce the number of people sleeping rough

References:

https://www.health.org.uk/evidence-hub/housing

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/housing-outlook-q1-2023/

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5802/ldselect/ldbuiltenv/132/13207.htm

Renting in England is racist

Renting in England is racist. Black people trying to rent properties in England routinely face discrimination based on their ethnicity, finding it harder to rent properties than White people.

According to the Government’s own research, large estate agents are significantly more likely to tell White people that there are properties available compared to shoppers from Black and minority ethnicities (BME).

73% of White shoppers were told that there were properties available while only 60% of BME shoppers were told the same and this was based on telephone enquiries, rather than face to face.

The discrimination does not end there. BME shoppers who had been told that there were properties available were less likely than White shoppers to be sent properties to consider. 88% of White shoppers were sent properties to consider compared with 82% of BME shoppers.

Landlords admitted to researcher that they see evidence of racist discrimination in lettings. Almost one in 5 landlords claimed to be aware of discrimination based on ethnicity. The quotes are direct and startling:

“I know of a landlord who does not rent to Black people but uses other excuses for not letting them rent from them. He has been open to me about his preference for White renters but it [is] very hard to prove this is what they are doing, as they find other excuses to say no to them.”

“Some people don’t let Brown people in.”

The government’s policies are doing little to address this discrimination. The “right to rent scheme” may even have made things worse, for example 14% of private landlords said that they were unwilling to let to UK nationals without a passport, possibly as a result of misplaced concerns about compliance with regulations.

While racist discrimination is widespread in the English private rented scheme, it is dwarfed by the scale of exclusion on the basis that households are claiming benefits. A staggering 38% of landlords said that they would not rent to people receiving Housing Benefit or the Local Housing Allowance. This is illegal but routine.

The past few years have brought us shocking stories about the way people from the Windrush generation have been treated by the UK government. But it is not just the government that practices discrimination, and plans to address racism in our society need to consider how we make sure that people are not discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity when they try to rent a home. For now, we still have a long way to go.

Who gets social housing?

Each year social landlords let fewer and fewer units. Only a portion of these go to homeless households. These two facts make it harder and harder to end homelessness.

The amount of social housing and how we allocate social housing it has a significant impact on the number of people that experience homelessness.

The history of the allocation of social housing is a long and complex one. Before Cathy Comes Home, it was common for prospective tenants to have to prove that they were worthy of a council flat, even needing letters of recommendation from the Vicar. Those most in need of housing, or minority ethnic groups, were often excluded or discriminated against.

The advent of right to buy and the end of significant public housing construction led to the ‘residualisation’ of social housing allocation. This meant that the only people able to get a new council or housing association flat were those that had the very highest of needs.

Over the past 50 years, the number of social housing homes in England has slightly shrunk from 4.5m in 1970 to 4.1m in 2020. During this same period the number of households has increased from 15.8m to 24.4m. It’s no surprise that it is now very hard to get social housing and that the politics of allocating social housing are fraught.

Not only are there fewer units of social housing, but fewer homes are being let each year (a home might be let because it is empty after the last tenant left, or because it is newly built). In 2019/20 there were 213,000 housing association lets, down from 271,000 in 2013/14, drop of 21%. There were 93,000 local authority lets in 2019/20, down from 126,000 in 2013/14, a 26% drop.

Who got to move into these homes? The proportion of lets that go to homeless households has not significantly reduced. The lines in the chart below show the % of lets that have gone to (formerly) homeless households (yellow is for housing association, red for local authority), while the bars show the number of units that are let each year.

As well as homeless households, overcrowded households, those in unsuitable or unaffordable accommodation all move into social housing. Research by the National Housing Federation estimates that there are currently 3.7 million people living in overcrowded homes, 2.4 million in unaffordable homes, 1 million in unsuitable homes and 650,000 affected by homelessness.

The chart below shows the number of households in temporary accommodation. Most of these people will be hoping to get social housing, but they are competing with those in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable homes.

The only way of taking the sting out of these very hard decisions is to build significantly more social housing, which takes time. Time to get the money, assemble the land, get permissions and then actually build the homes.

Even if we were to achieve this, there are a couple of additional points that need to be considered.  The Localism Act 2011 gave local authorities more discretion about who can be excluded from housing registers including ‘unacceptable behaviour’ that will disqualify people from allocations. This means homeless households cannot get social housing in some situations.

Secondly, many people are not able to get social housing because of their immigration status. It might be that they are not eligible for social housing or that they cannot afford to pay the rent, as they cannot claim universal credit.

For these groups, even building significantly more social housing would not mean they go the housing they need.

Housing is expensive, and such small portions

Housing in England is very expensive and often poor quality. Ideally it would be affordable and decent. Which is another way of saying that affordability is not the only measure of whether people are adequately housed.

Over the past year or so Daniel Hewitt and his team at ITV News have been investigating the condition of social housing conditions across England. This has resulted in numerous horrific examples of housing that falls well below acceptable standards.

Kwajo Tweneboa has campaigned tirelessly on social media to expose the damp, disrepair and sub-standard conditions that many social housing tenants endure.

In most of the cases that have been exposed, the issue is not affordability. Rents in social housing are usually far lower than in privately rented accommodation. This is not necessarily true in temporary accommodation but most households in temporary accommodation will have the majority if not all their rent covered through the social security system.

More broadly, if we measure the cost of housing as a percentage of household income, we only get part of the picture.

Imagine you are paying 40% of your salary on rent and bills and you are earning £25k per year. By many measures your housing is unaffordable. Then you get the good news that you’ve been promoted and will get a pay rise to £30k per year. Perhaps you decide to move to a new place. The rent is more but it’s in a nicer neighbourhood. When you work out the numbers you find that you’re still paying 40% of your new salary on rent and bills.

In this example, your housing is no more affordable than it was before. But it’s better housing. The same can be said on a national level. If everyone got richer and used their money to improve their homes, then their homes would be better, even if everyone continued to pay the same percentage of their income on housing.

Shelter found that people wanted housing that was affordable but also: (1) Safe, warm & secure (2) with enough space (3) Stable (so that they can plan for the future (4) In a safe neighbourhood not too far from work, friends and family

If it’s a trade off between these factors (as it usually is) people will often sacrifice other factors (e.g. space) for affordability. This leads to people living in cramped, overcrowded conditions.

Crude measures of affordability only give us part of the picture. We can aim for housing that is not only affordable but also decent, and in a safe neighbourhood.