Can social housing rebalance the homelessness equation?

Homelessness is not an unsolvable problem. Frontline housing workers, policymakers and researchers have agreed for years on the structural causes and triggers of homelessness.

Yes, we all know that certain groups, such as care leavers and prison leavers, are over-represented in the homeless population. We know that individual triggers of homelessness, such as family breakdown, domestic abuse and life-controlling dependence, are also part of this wider picture.

But the key message of the 2020 NFA Best Practice report, based on hard evidence from our members, is that we should be long past dismissing homelessness as the bad luck of the few. In the housing sector, of course, we are.

We know – and we have the proof – that if we were putting money into proven prevention work, such as the innovative, supportive schemes NFA members describe in Can social housing rebalance the homelessness equation, we would be making real headway into driving down homelessness numbers.

We know that if we were building enough good quality housing for social rent – we estimate 90,000 new homes at the very least – we’d be moving money from the £1bn a year being spent by local authorities on temporary accommodation to permanent and stable homes that enhance both economy and communities.

So while the inevitable knock-on effects on health costs, escalating welfare budgets, a decade of austerity-prompted cuts to services, and Universal Credit-triggered debt are depressingly familiar to us all, I want to bring forward the surprisingly positive messages that come from this report.

Partly because they are often the agency that will have to pick up the pieces when someone loses their home, ALMOs’ tenancy sustainment and homelessness prevention are an integral part of their service and offer ample proof of what works, and where public money would be well spent.

Welfare, employment, health and other support-focused initiatives keep people in their homes long before the clock starts ticking on the 56-day responsibility period set by the 2018 Homelessness Reduction.

Highly targeted programmes block common routes into homelessness such as hospital discharge, leaving care, household breakdown, domestic violence.

While the private sector is a leading cause of homelessness, it is also, in the absence of sufficient social housing, a necessary solution. So ALMOs work with the sector, sustaining private tenancies, doing what they can to make them more secure and affordable, to manage quality or to pay deposits.

Clearly there are policy lessons here. With our cross-sector Homes At The Heart campaign partners, including the Chartered Institute of Housing, we will continue to ask government to lay the foundations of a healthy mixed-tenure UK housing market that tackles homelessness by making sufficient, affordable and good quality social housing an indispensable part of the mix. We’ll do all we can to push for policy that helps people with their housing costs, invests in a Housing First approach to rough sleeping, and brings an end to no-fault evictions in the private sector.

At its simplest, as our report title suggests, the solution to homelessness is an equation. If the aim is to end homelessness, then on the other side of the equals sign must be tried, tested and effective homelessness prevention, plus sufficient truly affordable homes of the right kind for each type of household, and with secure tenure.

Current government strategy is failing to balance this equation. But social landlords like our members are nevertheless building the body of evidence that will drive more effective homelessness prevention long into the future.

You can find out more and view the NFA’s report here.