Government quietly pulls plug on housing homeless in hotels
CIVIL SERVANTS TELL OFFICIALS ‘EVERYONE IN’ SCHEME IS NO LONGER BEING CENTRALLY FUNDED
HUNDREDS of homeless people who had been put up in hotels during the coronavirus pandemic must now be moved out, the M.E.N. can reveal.
Civil servants have told Greater Manchester officials the scheme – known as ‘Everyone In’ – is no longer being funded by central government and that March’s original Covid guidance to local authorities has been scrapped.
So far, 1,600 homeless people with nowhere to self-isolate have been put up in emergency accommodation, including hundreds in hotels, as authorities were directed to protect them from the spread of the virus.
But a leaked report to the region’s combined authority reveals the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government has now ‘drawn a line’ under its programme and has told councils it will no longer be funded, although no ministerial statement has been made to that effect.
The government denies reneging on its commitments, but Greater Manchester sources spoken to by the M.E.N. said it had been made clear the current scheme was now being wrapped up, a position laid out in the internal report.
With temporary accommodation now even more stretched than previously, due to the need for social distancing, council chiefs are now rushing to find them somewhere else.
One senior figure said the coming months were going to be ‘painful’ from a homelessness perspective, adding: “The numbers are going to rocket on the streets and that’s before you factor in the effect of the downturn.”
Government announced in March that it was directing local authorities to house rough sleepers in hotels in order to protect them from the pandemic.
Since then it is understood Greater Manchester Combined Authority alone has spent £2m on accommodating homeless people. It means lockdown has seen the vast majority of rough sleepers on the streets here – bar around 120, who either refused or were evicted due to their behaviour – in shelter from ‘Everyone In.’
Only seven symptomatic cases have been reported among those people, according to the report, with no positive tests.
It also says there have been ‘many positive outcomes’ from the scheme, including ‘vast improvements in person hygiene, re-connection with friends and family, access to health support and treatment.’
While in most cases those accommodated under the government’s Covid programme during the pandemic here have already been moved to somewhere less short-term, there are still 311 people in hotels.
Some accommodation will be made available via the mayor’s existing ‘A Bed Every Night’ scheme, which is due to get £4.5m more in funding at the end of the month, but the report also says there is a shortage of ‘self contained’ accommodation.
A spokesperson for the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government said: “We have been clear councils must continue to provide safe accommodation for those that need it, and any suggestion that funding is being withdrawn or people asked to leave hotels is unfounded.”