Why the government has failed to ‘end rough sleeping’

The Conservative Manifesto for the 2019 election said this:

“We will end the blight of rough sleeping by the end of the next Parliament.”  (p.30)

With today’s announcement of a General Election in July, we will have a new Parliament this summer. And, as anyone who spends time in towns or city centres can testify, the plight of those sleeping rough is as obvious and as tragic as ever.  And the last two annual official counts bear this out: in 2022 rough sleeping rose by 26% and in 2023 by 27%. Tragically, rough sleeping is nowhere near ‘ended’. 

Government role

In 2018, I joined the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as part of a team seconded from charities and local authorities to work alongside the civil servants in the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI).  I was in the role for 4 years before returning to the voluntary sector last year.

There is no doubt that the RSI has done some great work and the response to rough sleepers in many parts of the country has been transformed. For example, the outreach teams, which engage with people on the streets, are better resourced than ever before. And over the course of 6 years, thousands of vulnerable people have been helped into emergency accommodation. Relationships and coordination between agencies have improved and the initiative was particularly vital during the pandemic as it coordinated the Everyone In initiative where 39,000 people came into emergency beds in hotels.

Failure

But, despite such progress, such initiatives must be judged on the targets they set for themselves. And by its own metrics, the campaign to end rough sleeping has failed. Battles have been won, but the overall war has been lost.

It is important we understand why this has happened. Housing is the number one social injustice in our country and we desperately need both a better public conversation about rough sleeping and a better political response to homelessness.

The reason that rough sleeping has not reduced significantly is not the fault of the team running the RSI who are as experienced and committed as any that could be assembled.  And it’s not to do with a lack of partnerships, ‘joined up thinking’ or even a lack of funding.

The reason

The reason it has failed is because rough sleeping is just the most visible tip of a far bigger iceberg of homelessness. It cannot be addressed as if it were a stand-alone, discrete issue because it is connected to a deep form of housing injustice affecting the whole country.

Whilst the government initiative has focused on the visible tip of the iceberg and the relatively small numbers who sleep rough, the homelessness hidden under the waterline has grown exponentially. There are now 109,000 households homeless in temporary accommodation – up 10% in a year. This includes 142,490 children – up 16,960 (14%) in a year.  This is the highest since records began.

This graph illustrates the problem. The UK’s rates of homelessness are appalling in comparison with other countries but our level of rough sleeping is relatively low:

An ocean of cuts

An analogy might be helpful. Imagine the Ministry of Health sought to improve hospital care by only investing in more ambulances and Accident and Emergency departments whilst cutting funding to all other hospital departments.  Some of the indicators of immediate response might improve but the overall performance of hospitals would plummet.

This is what has happened in housing. The government focus has increased in funding in emergency provision for rough sleepers, but this has been like a small island of increased funding amid an ocean of wider cuts.  And all the while the water has got colder and the iceberg has grown.

Mind-boggling cost

And whilst much is made of annual snapshot counts of a relatively small number of rough sleepers, the hidden forms of homelessness have been neglected. But the cost of providing emergency accommodation is mind-boggling. It is estimated that £1.6 billion a year is being spent on emergency accommodation and these costs are bankrupting Local Authorities. Money which could be used to create more social homes is being wasted on hotels.

Rough sleeping is politically sensitive because it is so public. We need to remember that it was Margaret Thatcher’s government who started the first Rough Sleeper’s Initiative back in 1990 because even she felt the pressure of the growing numbers sleeping on the streets in the late 1980s. 

But the high profile of the issue warps both the political and public response to homelessness. Rough sleeping is a tragic scandal but it’s only a fraction of wider homelessness. It cannot be addressed in isolation because it is just the most visible aspect of chronic housing injustice.

Complemented

In the early 2000s, I managed an emergency shelter in Soho, central London funded by the Rough Sleeping Unit (RSU) established by Tony Blair’s government and led by ‘Homeless Tsar’ Louise Casey.  This initiative officially succeeded in its aim of reducing rough sleeping by two-thirds.

But the critical difference was its context: the RSU’s work was complemented by significant increase in wider public investment tackling social exclusion. The work to address the tip of the iceberg was accompanied by commitments to tackle the deeper social challenges.

A credible plan

In contrast, both the economic context and policies of the last 14 years have combined to deepen our severe housing crisis.  The roots lie in austerity, increasing poverty, the slashing of Local Authority funding, the failure to create more social housing and address the increasing unaffordability of housing.

Also, in many areas non-UK nationals are a high proportion of those sleeping rough. As a country we have wanted the economic contribution of EU citizens but not made provision for their social needs. The restrictions on welfare entitlement have meant that those losing their employment have fallen into destitution.

Housing and homelessness should be top of the agenda for this coming election. And whilst every rough sleeper is a visible and tragic reminder of the reality of housing injustice, let’s remember that this just the tip of the homelessness iceberg. Let’s not be fooled by political rhetoric and emotive promises to ‘end rough sleeping’ without a coherent or credible plan to address the housing crisis beneath the waterline.