After a decade of cuts and plummeting staff levels, providers of housing and support want more than promises

New housing association houses in Rochdale. The government has pledged £1.67bn for new social housing.

 

New housing association houses in Rochdale. The government has pledged £1.67bn for new social housing. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

It has been a big week for government housing announcements: the government has quietly backed down from plans to remove protection for short-term supported housing funding; has said it plans to end rough sleeping within a decade; and has announced a “new deal” for social housing tenants.

It is important to acknowledge that the government has sought to listen to the people and organisations it should be listening to when drawing up these strategies: supported housing providers, rough sleeper organisations and social housing tenants. And the plans do, broadly, tackle some of the problems. It’s helpful to hear that hostel funding will be protected, that rough sleepers will be given appropriate support, and that social housing tenants’ concerns will not be sidelined and ignored.

But these are first steps, not a comprehensive solution to the problems of rough sleeping and the lack of affordable housing.

As the Guardian reported in November, more than 300,000 people are homeless in Britain. Despite this, the government continues its drive to sell off what remains of social housing. All the evidence of the past 38 years shows that social housing is not being replaced at anything like the rate at which it is being sold. Even Lord Porter, the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association and an advocate of right to buy, has said that, for the policy to work, councils need to be able to set the discount level locally, and retain 100% of the proceeds from sales so they can replace the housing that is being lost.

Sadly, this is not what the housing, communities and local government secretary, James Brokenshire, has announced. Instead, it will become easier for people to buy a part-share of their social home through the government’s shared-ownership scheme. The problem here is that once a tenant has a financial interest in their home – even as little as 1%, as the government is proposing – that home is effectively lost to the social rented sector.

Some new initiatives will empower social housing tenants, including quicker complaints processes and new powers for the regulator. But where there is a massive undersupply of affordable housing there will always be people who are prepared, or feel compelled, to put up with poor conditions and a poor service – and landlord “league tables” are not going to help with that.

Social housing professionals are also raising an eyebrow at the suggestion that the regulator for social housing needs “sharper teeth” to deal with poor-quality social landlords, given that the government abolished just such a body, the Tenant Services Authority, in 2010 as part of its much-vaunted bonfire of the quangos. We then moved to a system of light-touch regulation for housing associations which, tenants were assured, was all that was needed. It was certainly cheaper. Post-Grenfell, it seems lessons have been learned – although the government continues to resist a national licensing scheme for private landlords.

And while the announcements on rough sleeping look to shore up existing support and replace some of the support that has been taken away, they won’t solve the rough sleeping crisis within the next decade. The number of rough sleepers has increased by 169% since 2010, and if we want to reverse that increase we need to understand why it has happened.

The answer, unsurprisingly, is draconian funding cuts by successive governments since the financial crash of 2008.

Before 2009, at our Birmingham YMCA rough-sleeper hostel, we had one member of staff to support eight clients. Alongside that, there was a multidisciplinary street outreach team comprising substance misuse and mental health professionals as well as housing workers. When those street outreach teams identified a rough sleeper, they could prescribe the necessary medication and refer them into a treatment programme there and then. The individual could then be referred on to a place like the YMCA. Knowing they were being treated for their problems and had access to the medication they needed meant we were confident that any risk they posed to themselves, our staff, other residents and the wider community could be managed.

Today, the situation has changed dramatically. The multidisciplinary teams have gone. Rough sleepers have to take their place in a queue to be referred to mental health services and specialist substance misuse support. The waiting list to access these services can be up to three months. So when the housing workers come across a rough sleeper and try to refer them into a hostel, no medication will have been prescribed and no treatment programme will be in place.

Meanwhile, at the hostel itelf, there are now 18 clients for every staff member – more than double what it was a decade ago. And those staff will no longer be paid to provide support. Since the reduction and removal of Supporting People funding, landlords are restricted, practically and legally, in the kinds of clients they can house. Most of the burden of accommodating rough sleepers now sits within the housing benefit budget. But housing benefit cannot legally be used to provide support, only to fund housing management services – allocating properties and collecting rent – and the cost of providing and maintaining the building itself.

The government’s rough sleeper strategy helps part of this problem. It looks as though we may see the reintroduction of multidisciplinary street outreach teams, for instance. But the funding lost since 2009 will not be replaced by the £100m that has been announced. Until it is, rough sleeping is likely to continue into the next decade and beyond.

And the £1.67bn for new social housing that was made available in June will build just 23,000 new social homes.We need significantly more money if we are going to see any real difference to homelessness and rough sleeping.