A recent inquiry session held by Curia’s Levelling up Commission sought to provide commission members with a greater understanding of the challenges facing the housing market in the United Kingdom. The session featured three separate panel sessions, all of which covered a different key area relating to housing, homelessness and levelling up.
The final panel within the session was about homelessness in the UK. It was hosted by the Commission’s chair, Paul Sheriff, a former Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care. She was joined by Hugo Sugg, CEO of the Carden Banfield Foundation, and Joe Garrod, the Corporate Director of Housing at the London Borough of Waltham Forest in East London.
Sheriff quizzed panellists on the existing strategies in place to tackle homelessness and how ending homelessness in the UK can have a positive knock-on effect on different levelling-up areas.
Homelessness as a public health issue
The first speaker was Hugo Sugg, who has a personal understanding of homelessness and rough sleeping the most. At 18, he found himself homeless for three months which spurred him on to create the Carden Banfield Foundation to provide better outcomes for those who find themselves in a similar position.
Sugg started off by saying that it will be “impossible” to prevent homelessness altogether and that homelessness needs to be looked at “through the lens of public health” as opposed to housing. Talking about how his foundation works with these principles in mind, he said:
“We are an online policy organisation and we don’t work directly with anyone on the street. The foundation exists to help improve communication between organisations and services in local areas across the UK that work with individuals and families to try and prevent homelessness. If it can’t be prevented, then to make sure it does not reach the crisis stage.”
“We work mainly with councils and local government so we aren’t targeting the front line or national government. The front line is fantastic but the problem is that yes, you can help solve the issue for the people you come across day to day, however, you can’t solve wider structural issues around homelessness.
The Satellite Hub Programme
The most important project that the Carden Banfield Foundation have created is the Satellite Hub Programme. This programme is built around volunteers and its sole purpose is to improve strategies around homelessness and housing in local areas. Explaining how the programme works, Sugg said:
“We recruit a local volunteer, who then doesn’t have any contact with organisations for 4-6 months. Instead, during that time they research homelessness strategies in their designated local area to become experts in homelessness and housing and issues that affect homeless people in that area.
“From there, they then create a plan on how they are going to work with organisations, such as the local council, mental health services, addiction clinics, police etc. to improve services in the area. The role of the leader is a mediatory role – being that peacemaker in the middle helping to connect different organisations and different people.
“We as a management team then sign it off then the contact starts with the organisations. From there, front-line services can become better coordinated and effective partnerships are built. The hope is that the scheme will significantly reduce rough sleeper deaths, improve local services, create local outcome-led homeless forums and stop taxpayer money being wasted.”
A systemic risk to the financial sustainability of local councils
As a Corporate Director of Housing for Waltham Forest, Joe Garrod knows more about the housing crisis than most. Within his borough, 900 households are living in temporary accommodation and they receive around 3,000 approaches for advice and support each year.
Garrod believes that the crisis has got to the point now where homelessness is more than just a “societal tragedy”. Elaborating on that point, he said:
“Homelessness now represents a systemic risk to the financial sustainability of local government. Hastings have gone public about their temporary accommodation costs- they also have 900 households in temporary accommodation and that presents a risk to their solvency as a local authority.
“A lot of the increasing demand for temporary accommodation is being driven by the freeze to local housing allowance rates (LHA). LHA rates are used to calculate housing benefit for tenants renting from private landlords. These rates should be at the 30th percentile of private rents in an area.
“LHA rents have been frozen since 2020 and have fallen massively behind prevailing market rents. In 22/23, just 2.3% of all London listings (1-4 bedrooms) were available at LHA levels when it should be 30%. This presents a massive challenge as families on low incomes are able to have their housing needs met in London.
“From a levelling up perspective, this is forcing London boroughs to place families away from their support networks to places where properties are cheaper. A further compounding factor is that the Home Office are taking a large proportion of beds for emergency accommodation for asylum seekers.”
Families in Housing Need Programme
One solution that Garrod and Waltham Forest have come up with is a “Families in Need Housing Programme.” The programme came on the back of work the borough undertook to better understand the root causes of homelessness. Explaining the process and what the programme does, Garrod said:
“Given the challenging situation in both social housing supply and private rental sector supply, we have taken an early intervention approach that seeks to discover the route causes of homelessness.
“We’ve found that things such as poverty, unemployment, mental ill health, physical ill health and family conflict all lead to homelessness and that piece of work led us to a new approach. A few years ago the council put £2m into a Families in Housing Need Programme which looks to take a preventative approach to homelessness and to have a positive impact on people’s lives.
“A key element is our housing sustainment team, which is based in a family hub and undertakes outreach across the borough. The service has two strong principles at its core – a preventative approach to ensure at-risk residents stay in stable accommodation and relationship-based interventions which look to increase resilience with individual pathways and solutions.
“We also have a flexible support fund which offers additional support to families in need.”
Summary
- The final panel of the Levelling Up Commission’s most recent inquiry session focused on homelessness and rough sleeping and the measures being undertaken across the country to try and prevent it.
- Hugo Sugg, CEO of the Carden Banfield Foundation, said that homelessness needs to be viewed as a public health issue rather than just a housing issue.
- Sugg emphasised that it’s impossible to prevent homelessness altogether, but that improving communication between organizations and services can help prevent homelessness or reduce its impac
- Joe Garrod, Corporate Director of Housing at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, stated that homelessness has become a systemic risk to the financial sustainability of local councils.
- Garrod attributes the increasing demand for temporary accommodation to the freeze on local housing allowance rates and highlights the challenges faced by families on low incomes in finding affordable housing in London.
Final thought
The session highlighted the complexities of homelessness and the need for a multifaceted approach to address this pressing issue. The Satellite Hub Programme and Families in Housing Need Programme demonstrate innovative solutions that focus on prevention, early intervention, and community collaboration.
However, it is clear that more needs to be done to address the root causes of homelessness, such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of affordable housing. As a society, we must prioritise tackling these underlying issues to ensure that everyone has a safe and secure place to call home.
Watch the full video here: