We’re used to TV dramas breaking through and shifting the public mood – the most recent examples are Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence. And almost 60 years ago, the BBC’s Cathy Come Home powerfully brought the impact of homelessness to a mass audience. Some 12 million viewers, approaching a quarter of the UK population at that time, watched the programme. It prompted both the founding of the homelessness charity Crisis and the passing of the landmark Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977.
Homeless hasn’t gone away, of course. In fact, as the Centre for London’s housing summit recently heard, the housing crisis is “spiralling out of control”. For homelessness minister and London MP Rushanara Ali we are seeing the “worst housing crisis in living memory”. For former Conservative cabinet member Sir Simon Clarke, we are facing a “national housing emergency”.
Rough sleeping in London is at an “all time high”, rents keep rising and housing supply, whether of homes for sale, for private rent or for social rent, has slumped. Most critically, more than 183,000 Londoners, including 90,000 children, are now homeless and living in temporary accommodation (TA) provided by the boroughs. And as current Crisis chief executive Matt Downie pointed out last week, “temporary” is a misnomer. “More than a fifth of all families in temporary accommodation have been there for five years or more,” he said.
The homelessness crisis has two impacts. Firstly, for councils, which have statutory responsibilities for homeless families, it’s breaking the bank. Last year councils nationally spent £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation. In London that’s £4 million a day.
Seven councils in the capital can now only balance the books with “exceptional financial support” from Whitehall, and Greenwich housing director and co-chair of the London Housing Directors group Jamie Carswell said at the summit that more would inevitably follow as TA costs continued to drive boroughs effectively into bankruptcy.
Secondly, in Carswell’s words, homelessness is “soul-destroying”, affecting the health, wellbeing and life chances of those affected. Downie says it can also be life threatening – living in temporary accommodation was found to have contributed to the deaths of 74 children in the UK in the last five years.
Last month, the House of Commons housing, communities and local government committee starkly highlighted the impact on children’s health and education. “It is utterly shameful,” said its chair, Vauxhall MP Florence Eshalomi, “that so many families are living in B&Bs, bedsits and hotels that are completely unsuitable to their needs, having to travel for hours simply to get to school or work, not having basics like cots and radiator covers, not even having the space to learn to walk or crawl.
In London, that’s 90,000 children, equivalent to one in every classroom – a grim statistic which the cross-party London Councils group regularly sets out. As architect Russell Curtis, who has pioneered work on better quality “meanwhile” housing, has put it, “we cannot continue to absorb the financial burden of the housing crisis, nor can we ignore the profound human cost of children growing up in precarious homes…Everyone must be focused on finding a solution – swiftly, with determination and compassion.”
Is the crisis shifting the political dial yet? Or is it still hidden, with homeless people’s voices not yet heard? One issue may be that it is the capital which is “at the epicentre” of the crisis, according to housing campaign group Shelter. £1.6 billion of the £2.29 billion TA bill footed by councils last year was in London. The crisis may not be felt so acutely elsewhere. And while homelessness is becoming the “number one pressure” sucking money out of council budgets, according to Carswell the complexities of council funding don’t necessarily make that impact evident – yet.
The government has boosted homelessness funding for councils to £1 billion this year, delivering an extra £78 million for London, and there’s £5 million for “emergency accommodation reduction” pilots in 20 councils. In London an “Ending Homelessness Accelerator” programme, run by the boroughs and City Hall with government support, is looking to develop new “evidence-led, cross-London strategic approaches” to tackle the crisis, building on successful work at borough level.
But all eyes are now are on the forthcoming government spending review, and particularly the outcome of a new cross-Whitehall ministerial group set up last year by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and charged with developing a “long-term strategy to get back on track to ending homelessness once and for all”.
For Downie, that must include urgent action now to reduce the use of the most costly and unsuitable temporary accommodation and do more to prevent homelessness in the first place. London Councils are also looking for a package of immediate changes, including reforming housing benefit rules to allow the boroughs to fund better-quality temporary accommodation, and multi-year rent settlements enabling them to repair their depleted housing budgets.
But the key change, campaigners and councils agree, will be “significantly increased” investment in building more social rented homes. With many other calls on the Treasury being made, perhaps we need another Cathy Come Home moment.
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