Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Give them a home & help them to keep it
Cross-party pledge to help homeless Tory targets ‘not ambitious enough’
THE Mirror’s call for action on homelessness was backed by MPS across the political spectrum in Parliament yesterday.
They said the Government’s strategy to get people off the streets is not ambitious enough, and falls well behind the public’s desire to solve the issue.
Tory MP Will Quince backed our demand for an extension to the Housing First scheme, which p r o v i d e s me n t a l health and addiction support as well as housing. He said: “If we d o n’ t a d d r e s s the underlying causes of h omel e ssn e ss then getting someone a home may not solve the problem.”
Labour MP Neil Coyle displayed yesterday’s Mirror front page telling of “Britain’s shame” as he spoke in the debate. He said our “fantastic campaign deserves credit for humanising what can be a bit of a statistical debate, when actually these are real people’s lives in devastating circumstances”.
MPS agreed the Government lacked ambition with its target to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it by 2027.
That timeframe is “too long” and it must be “far more ambitious”, said Mr Quince, who co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group for Ending Homelessness with Mr Coyle.
And Labour’s Lyn Brown said even that target will not be met at the current rate of progress. Rough sleeping fell by 2% last year but rose in big cities
If we don’t address the causes then getting someone a home may not solve it WILL QUINCE URGES EXTENSION OF HOUSING FIRST SCHEME
including London and Manchester. Ms Brown said: “At 2% a year it’s going to take until 2052 to deal with rough sleeping and that’s not good enough.”
Shadow Housing Minister Melanie Onn said: “In five years’ time we will be back to where we were in 2009.”
The Housing First approach, which has been successful in Scotland, is being piloted in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and the Liverpool area to help 1,000 rough sleepers and those at risk of ending up on the streets.
As well as secure housing, the system involves support to help rough sleepers recover from any mental health or substance misuse issues, and to sustain their tenancies. Mr Quince said: “We know this works because we’ve seen it work around the world in particular in Scandinavia where they’ve seen an eradication of rough sleeping entirely.”
Mr Coyle highlighted the case of a woman in his Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency in South London who was “sleeping with someone different every night so she wouldn’t have to go back to an abusive relationship or sleep on the streets”.
But he insisted that, despite the complexity of homelessness, the issue is solvable and that the public are ahead of the Government in demanding change. He added: “The two truisms from all the cases I see are that no circumstances have been anything other than tragic, but all of them have been avoidable. The public interest in solving homelessness isn’t matched by government action.”
Blaming the Tories’ welfare policy and cuts for the problem, he said: “If only as much effort went into tackling this problem as creating it.”
Tory MP Peter Aldous said an assessment must be made into any link between homelessness and the controversial roll-out of Universal Credit.
He also called for long-term funding for services and a “dramatic increase in the amount of affordable housing”.
There are now 1.3 million children in poverty in private rented homes, the National Housing Federation has revealed – up 69% from 2008.
Almost 250,000 of these children would be lifted out of poverty if they were living in social housing.
Homelessness Minister Heather Wheeler said: “Ensuring that everyone has a decent, affordable, secure home is a core priority for this government.”
She insisted the Government’s target is “actually an ambitious target but it’s essential that we achieve it”.