3,900 homeless people sleep rough on any given night
Andrew Lord, Chief Executive Alabaré
Last week I attended Homeless Link’s House of Parliament launch of their “Breaking the cycle” Campaign to end homelessness. The presentations by Lord Best and the Minister for Homelessness highlighted the scale of the problem and some of the initiatives the Government had recently launched.
The number of people who are homeless is significant and shocking. Research by Shelter before Christmas showed nationally 326,000 people are in temporary accommodation, most of whom are in families with children. 3,900 people are sleeping rough on any given night. There are a further 16,600 single people in hostels or other homeless accommodation.
The Homeless Link team spoke about the cycle of homelessness that needs to be broken and the need for long-term solutions. A shift from temporary accommodation and other emergency measures to preventive solutions. Specifically, how to support people to avoid them becoming homeless in the first place. Prevention measures include debt advice, supporting people in relationship crisis, supporting people in mental health crisis, and advice and support to address addiction issues. Early support can reduce the likelihood of a person becoming homeless.
The spend on homelessness is significant, the National Audit Office calculated the spend on homelessness by local authorities at £2.44bn and this is an underestimate because it does not include the spend by charities, funded by donations.
Homeless Link made a number of recommendations including prevention at the core, joined-up initiatives and cross-departmental work in Government, comprehensive and personalised services. As one of the experts with lived experience said “to fully recover from homelessness, you need to feel safe and like you truly belong where you stay …. A one size fits all approach simply does not work”
As I made the journey back to South Wiltshire, I thought about the key messages and the work Alabaré undertakes to support homeless people. Through Alabaré’s work at the drop-in centre and in the supported housing for the homeless, we are responding to the person who is homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. We have developed initiatives to support people to move onto independent living, including employment advice, training and participation in the self-build programme. Much of this work is in partnership with Wiltshire Council, other statutory partners and charities.
However, with the significant numbers of homeless people nationally, I reflected on how we could shift our approach to a more preventative approach. Supporting people to ensure they don’t become homeless in the first place.
It is a fundamental human right for people to have access to safe, secure, habitable, and affordable homes. And when homelessness does happen it should be rare, brief and unrepeated.
Help us at Alabaré end homelessness.
Andrew Lord, MBE Chief Executive Alabaré