Candid Mayor says crisis ‘not easily fixed’

Tackling homelessness ‘more

ON his first day at work after securing the West Midlands mayoralty two years ago, Andy Street dropped in at homeless charity St Basil’s in Birmingham to talk about rough sleeping.

Trailed by TV cameras and press journalists, it was a tactic designed to send a strong and clear message to his electorate: tackling homelessness was going to be a priority, just as he had promised.

The buoyant new Mayor said in interviews that day that he wanted to work with councils and the Government to end the scourge of rough sleeping, which he described as the “shame of the region”.

At the time there were around 50 people sleeping rough in Birmingham every night.

Two years on, that figure has almost doubled. There were 91 rough sleepers at the last annual count in November.

By pretty much every other discernible measure, the crisis of homelessness in the West Midlands has got worse, not better, since 2017.

The number of people presenting as homeless is soaring.

Birmingham City Council’s housing team receives around 600 new applications every month; the number of children living in B&B rooms for at least six weeks at a time continues to rise; spending on emergency accommodation to keep families off the streets has tripled since 2016.

The number of people on the city council’s housing register tops 12,000.

A similar picture prevails across other towns and cities in the region, though it is in Birmingham where the impact is most visible.

It is clear that the regional homelessness task force Mr Street set up has not yet delivered the outcomes for which he had hoped.

Within months of his election, the rough sleeping working group he convened had plans drawn up for a £15.2 million bid for central Government cash.

The detailed bid included street intervention work and a project to address the specific challenge of migrants from the European Union who were sleeping rough.

There were plans for projects dealing with young people not in education, training or employment, and to respond to the challenges of increased use of psychoactive substances among rough sleepers.

The group also hoped for funding for intensive support of homeless people with the most complex needs.

But, when it came to it, the Government only backed the region’s application to be a Housing First pilot area, supported by a £9.6 million pot of money. Housing First aims to provide people identified as rough sleepers with a home and intensive support to try to help them get on their feet and go on to achieve their potential.

Alan Fraser, chief executive of YMCA Birmingham, wrote earlier this year that the negative response to the group’s bid for help was “a major embarrassment” for Mr Street, demonstrating that he could not magic up money from his Conservative colleagues in Westminster just by asking for it.

Now potential mayoral rival Liam Byrne, a Labour MP who has focused heavily on homelessness and poverty this past two years, has adopted the slogan “Austerity Street” in the early stages of his campaign.

He hopes to persuade potential voters that Mr Street has presided over an austerity mayoralty, with a rise in food bank use, declining access to mental health and addiction services, and soaring rough sleepers.

To his credit, Mr Street has his hands up in surrender before I even draw my pen to grill him on the success or otherwise of his homelessness strategy.

“It has been more difficult, more complex, than I envisaged,” says the softly spoken Mr Street when we meet in his fourth floor office at the West Midlands Regional Authority’s headquarters.

“I don’t feel regret about seeking to tackle this. I still feel about it like I did in the election campaign and the day after being elected. This is an issue that genuinely concerns me and people across the region.

“However difficult it is, it was still right for me to say we need to work on this but, yes, it has been incredibly difficult and complex. That’s not for the want of effort by lots and lots of people.

“The councils have the statutory responsibility and are working very hard towards it. There are some brilliant voluntary agencies doing outstanding work, among them St Basil’s. What I have ended up concluding is that there are very difficult underlying issues here, not easily fixed.”

Even Mr Street’s redoubtable abilities as a leader and problemsolver, honed especially as chief executive of retailer John Lewis, appear to have come up short on this issue.

“It’s not all been failure. Some really good things have emerged and are under way but that has still not been enough because some of the underlying issues are so challenging.”

Highlights so far include the introduction of the Housing First model, which has helped 60 former rough sleepers. There is funding in place for another 600.

He’s also backed the launch of Change Into Action, a fundraising drive that allows people to donate online to support homeless people in their local area. The taskforce has also helped lobby against proposals to halt housing benefits for 18- to 21-year-olds.

He said: “I am satisfied that the effort we had to make to come together has been right but I am incredibly disappointed we don’t have more to show for it yet.

I am satisfied that the effort we had to make to come together has been right but I am disappointed we don’t have more to show for it yet.

Andy

Street