Rough sleeping problem can be solved but political will needed to make it happen
Tory Minister James Brokenshire has “discovered” rough sleeping with a £100 million strategy to tackle homelessness.
The Coalition government in 2010 inherited a success story, with the Labour government having reduced rough sleeping by three quarters. The last eight years has undone that work. Brokenshire is right in saying that rough sleeping has complex causes. All the more reason to apply proper resources and thinking to tackling those causes.
You need a range of measures here in Edinburgh, as in other cities – in the ‘Noughties’ we had a range of provision including outreach workers who made personal contact with people sleeping or begging on the streets, flats with intensive support for those with the most complex needs, and support for vulnerable young tenants whose tenancies often failed.
Housing staff did outreach work in prisons to help prisoners avoid becoming homeless on release. I hope most of that is still in place but I suspect it often is not. Councils who provide most support services, directly or through voluntary organisations, have had budget cuts year on year since 2010. Prevention suffered as services struggled to deal with crisis needs. The various changes to benefits, especially to housing benefit, have increased pressure on councils’ homelessness services.
Rough sleepers are the tip of the iceberg, but problems have been building underneath.
As temporary accommodation silts up because of the lack of social rented homes, it is often the most challenging and vulnerable who miss out. Nor is this just an English problem. In Scotland rough sleeper numbers are rising again and more widely, temporary accommodation is under strain. In Edinburgh on some nights recently 70 households with children have been in B&B accommodation. The problems are not insoluble. They just need the resources applied to provide homes and support, and the political will to make sure it happens.
SHEILA GILMORE St Catherine’s Place, Edinburgh