Rough Sleeper Numbers Down 37% In England During Covid Pandemic

The number of rough sleepers in England plummeted during the pandemic, data shows, with 2,688 people estimated to be sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2020, down 37% from the previous year. However, the numbers are still 52% higher than in 2010 when such data first started being collected. Homelessness charities said the decrease showed the success of schemes, such as the Everyone In initiative brought in during the first lockdown, to bring people off the streets and provide safe accommodation, but warned numbers could rise once lockdown ended if the government did not make plans to tackle homelessness permanently. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/25/rough-sleepers-england-covid-pandemic-homelessness

Government Urged To Remove ‘Last Barriers’ Preventing Councils From Housing Homeless

Homelessness charities have written to the government urging the removal of the remaining barriers preventing people who are homeless from getting access to the self-contained accommodation they need. The charities state that over the course of the week, they have heard repeated examples of councils denying help to people on the basis of them not having a local connection to the area or that they have no recourse to public funds – meaning they are not eligible for government assistance. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/government-urged-to-remove-last-remaining-barriers-preventing-councils-from-housing-homeless/

St Mungo's Staff Strike Over Conditions And Treatment Of Migrants

Hundreds of workers at Britain’s biggest homelessness charity have started a three-day strike in a protest about working conditions and the treatment of vulnerable migrant rough sleepers whose details the charity shared with the Home Office. Staff at St Mungo’s have gone on strike after a year-long dispute about the charity’s sickness policy and concern about the ratio of junior to more senior workers. Union officials estimate that about 200 staff have joined the strike – the first at the charity since 2014. Workers fear the staffing policy opens the door to a cheaper workforce on worse pay and terms and conditions. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/16/st-mungos-staff-on-strike-about-conditions-and-treatment-of-migrants

Homeless Charity Head 'Gagged' Over Universal Credit Remarks

A charity head said she was told her organisation may miss out on National Lottery funding if she continued to criticise universal credit. CEO of Humanity Torbay, Ellie Waugh, posted a video saying she was told to stop speaking out about contentious issues or risk losing out on a grant. In a statement, the Big Lottery Fund said it was "concerned" about the case. It said it did not withhold funding from organisations on the basis of what they said publicly on social issues. Read more on the BBC website.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-46009397

Housing Barriers Threaten Young Offender Rehabilitation

Young offenders leaving custody face a battle to access suitable housing, heightening the risk they will continue to be involved in crime, a report has warned. The report by Nacro and youth homelessness charity Centrepoint found that accessing safe and stable accommodation is vital to reducing reoffending when young people leave custody. But too often they face multiple barriers to finding somewhere suitable to stay. Researchers found poor-quality resettlement planning before young people leave custody to be an issue. They said that plans are often not carried out far enough in advance and fail to effectively take into account young people's needs. Read more on the Children & Young People Now website.

https://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/2005415/housing-barriers-threaten-young-offender-rehabilitation-study-finds

Charities Call On Associations To Provide Housing First Accommodation

A homelessness charity has called on social landlords to provide homes for Housing First programmes across the country. Currently only 50% of Housing First projects have access to social housing, according to Homeless Link. Homeless Link has published guidance for social landlords on the purpose of Housing First and how it can benefit landlords. Housing First gives permanent housing to rough sleepers with complex support needs before tackling any problems they may have, such as addiction or mental health issues. Read more on Inside Housing.

Rough Sleepers Being Targeted By Legal Powers Designed For ASB

Councils across England and Wales are targeting rough sleepers with antisocial behaviour measures such as PSPOs and Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs), according to new research from Crisis, the national homelessness charity. Drawing on a survey of local councils, the report shows how more than one in three (36%) are targeting rough sleepers with enforcement measures. Of these councils, common measures included Criminal Behaviour Orders (45 per cent), Dispersal Orders (35 per cent), Public Space Protection Orders (17 per cent) and actions under the Vagrancy Act (27 per cent). Read more on the Crisis website.

Charities Referring Rough Sleepers To Immigration Enforcement Teams

Leading homelessness charities whose remit is to protect vulnerable rough sleepers have been passing information about some of them to the Home Office, leading to their removal from the UK. A report from Corporate Watch, The Round Up, reveals concerns about homelessness charities’ links to immigration enforcement and comes at a time of increasing disquiet about the involvement of landlords, schools and the NHS with immigration enforcement.  Civil liberties campaigners have accused the government of having a toxic “border on every street” policy. Read more on the Guardian website.

Rough Sleeping Is At A 20-Year High

More people will spend Christmas sleeping rough on the streets of Nottinghamshire this year than at any time in the last two decades. Local homeless people say that the problem is increasing at such a rate that, for the first time in 20 years, they fear someone may be found dead in a shop doorway this winter. So, The Post has teamed up with homelessness charity Framework to try to raise £30,000 to help take people off the streets this Christmas. Last month the Nottinghamshire charity had to cancel its annual sponsored sleep-out, due to fears that the fundraiser would be sabotaged by self-styled activists. This robbed Framework of up to £30,000. Read more on the Nottingham Post website.

Anti-Homelessness Helpline Now Receiving Call For Help Every 30 Seconds

A helpline run by an anti-homelessness charity now receives one call asking for help every 30 seconds, new figures reveal. Shelter’s advice line has seen the volume of calls rise by 50,000 in the past 12 months, with one in four cases taken on by the line from people who are homeless or at risk of losing their home within 28 days.  A report by a cross-party group of MPs warned that the number of rough sleepers in England had risen by 30 per cent to 3,569 between 2014 and 2015. They blamed in part changes to housing benefits payments. Other factors, such as a trend away from social housing and towards private renting, have been blamed for the increase in homelessness and rough sleeping in recent years. Read more on the Independent website.

Homeless Charity Hands Out Eviction Notices To Its Own Tenants

A leading homeless charity has come under fire after handing out eviction notices to tenants living in properties it owns in the capital. St Mungo's, who carry out a number of homeless services in the capital, own 24 flats in South London. They are now reviewing the tenancies of 14 of those.Tenants of the flats say they were asked by the charity to attend their offices, where they were then handed section 21 eviction notices - the first step in eviction procedures. Read more on the politics.co.uk website.

Micro-Homes For The Homeless

A city council and a homelessness charity are working together to try and provide micro-homes for the homeless. Worcester City Council has granted planning permission to The Homeless Foundation for an iKozie Micro-Home. The self-contained, fully-fitted home is designed to house young people who find themselves homeless and provide a base to enable them get back on their feet. Inspired by yacht interiors and first class airline suites, the iKozie measures 186 square foot (17.25sqm), and will be built using modular construction off-site and lifted into position via a crane in the back garden of an existing house upon completion. The idea is to use it as move-on accommodation to help the homeless people transition from hostels into independent living. Read more on the Housing Excellence website.

Tax Rules Helping UK Charities Build Homes Can Also Bring Financial Ruin

Charities are granted a number of VAT exemptions and zero ratings, including zero rating on the construction of new buildings to be used for charitable purposes. Many charities that provide accommodation to vulnerable groups rely on this to make their projects economically viable. But the rules are complicated and open to interpretation. This has caused problems for Caritas Anchor House – a homelessness charity working in one of the country’s most deprived boroughs, Newham, London. This charity is in the process of trying to build “move on” flats for homeless people to transition back into independent living, a service that helps turn around lives and creates considerable savings for the public in the long term. Unfortunately, a decision by HMRC to charge VAT on the full cost of the development, has increased the bill by £1m. Read more on the Guardian website.

Charity Gives London’s Young Homeless Tickets To Sleep On Night Buses

Homeless young people, unable to find beds in emergency hostels, are being given bus tickets to allow them to sleep on London’s night buses as the number of people sleeping rough in the capital soars, a leading homelessness charity has revealed. New Horizon Youth Centre, a day centre in central London that tries to find emergency accommodation for vulnerable young people in crisis situations, said staff distributed bus tickets on a regular basis, and gave young people details about the best routes looping around the capital through the night, so they could have a safe place to sleep. Read more on the Guardian website.

Government Revives Local Funding Plans

Inside Housing understands that civil servants at the DWP plan to commission research to kickstart proposals that have made little progress since 2011. Plans to localise cash for supported housing raised significant concern among providers in a consultation exercise carried out three years ago. In the 2011 consultation the DWP suggested that supported housing could be paid for through the local housing allowance with a fixed ‘top-up’ to recognise the higher costs of services such as 24-hour sleep-in support. At the time, housing organisations including Framework, a specialist homelessness charity, warned that such a change would ‘pose a serious threat to the stability and well-being of thousands of vulnerable people’.  Read more on Inside Housing.

Charity Wins Funding To Encourage Homeless People To Vote

A homelessness charity has won government funding to encourage social housing tenants and homeless people to vote. Homeless Link, partnered with the Hansard Society, will use the £39,053 pot to run events designed to help social tenants and people living in temporary accommodation to join the electoral roll and engage them in politics. It is part of a £4.2 million Cabinet Office ‘innovation fund’ to ensure everyone in Britain is signed up to the electoral register. The fund is shared with four other national organisations. Concerns have been raised that a change to voting regulations this April, where people will register individually to vote rather than as households, will make it harder for people to vote. Read more on Inside Housing.

Removing Housing Benefit for U-25s Could Push More into Homelessness

The Prime Minister has reconfirmed a Conservative Party proposal to remove housing benefit to those aged 25 years or less if they win the next election.  Our 'Young and Homeless' 2012 survey of 117 homeless charities and 101 local authority housing services found that:

·         50% of providers say more young people are seeking support

·         65% of young people supported by providers are homeless due to relationship breakdown with family, friends or partners

·         54% of providers report closures of youth services in their area due to funding cuts

·         More than half of providers are turning young people away because they are full

Read more on the Homeless Link website.

Million More Homes Needed For Vulnerable People

Nearly one million more new properties could be needed in England by 2021 for those on housing benefit, according to research by Cambridge University and homelessness charity Centrepoint.  In a new report, the organisations estimated that 934,388 extra sub-market housing units - those for social rent or accessible to tenants in the private rented sector on housing benefit - will be needed in addition to planned current supply.  It said that 137,535 of these would be required by people under 25, with such young people facing more barriers than ever to accessing housing. Read more on Inside Housing.

Struggles of Benefit Recipients 'Must Be Told'

Housing professionals must focus on telling the ‘personal’ and ‘deeply emotional’ experiences of people receiving housing benefit if they are to alter the prevailing negative public perception of housing support. A report by the Fabian Society for homelessness charity Crisis, found that despite antipathy towards the £23 billion housing benefit bill being ‘deeply ingrained’ and not helped by frequently ‘toxic’ media coverage, polling data shows public attitudes can be altered.  Although the study found that people were initially more convinced by arguments against as opposed to in favour of spending on housing benefit, it also emerged that 63 per cent of people felt poverty was ‘caused by forces beyond the control of the individual’. The poll also found that two-thirds of respondents agreed that the government should focus on tackling unemployment, low wages and rising rents, rather than planning further spending cuts.  Download a copy of the report from the Fabian Society website.

Shelter Sees Surge in Demand for Help

Calls to the housing charity Shelter have surged 40% as rising living costs and welfare cuts leave growing numbers of people struggling to pay their bills.

The charity said in the past year its helpline dealt with 12,408 callers in England who wanted assistance with housing costs, arrears and other debt problems – up from 8,838 in 2011-12. In the past six months unique visits to its online advice page had doubled, it added. Shelter said with further benefit cuts on the way, it was concerned that "even more people will be left desperately trying to find the means to pay for their home". Read more on the Shelter website.