Housing Justice calls on government to unveil new strategy for ending rough sleeping
February 24, 2022
Official figures released today by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities show the number of rough sleepers counted on a single night in England in Autumn 2021 stands at 2,440 compared to the figure from a year ago, which stood at 2,688. This figure represents a decrease of 9% or 250 people.
However this year’s number is still 38% higher than in 2010 and comes at a time of unprecedented action on rough sleeping from councils and central government, following public health risks owing to the pandemic. Under the ‘Everybody In’ scheme and its successor programmes: the ‘Protect Programme’ and ‘Protect and Vaccinate’, local councils have been encouraged to accommodate people found sleeping rough sleeping in hotels and self-contained accommodation.
Night Shelters, such as those supported by the ‘Housing Justice Winter Night Shelter Network’ were advised to close during the first wave of the pandemic, given the transmission risk of COVID-19 in shared sleeping spaces. At the start of the first wave of the pandemic in March 2020, approximately 1,000 people were moved from night shelters into self-contained or single room accommodation, predominantly in hotels. This intervention alone has been estimated to have saved 268 lives.
In 2021/22 an estimated 81 organisations that previously provided communal night shelters changed their provision, to offer single room accommodation for people sleeping rough. With funding and support from Housing Justice and Homeless Link they were able to provide more than 966 beds, with an estimated minimum of 2,500 people using those beds over the course of the winter. Without this provision, the street count would have been 30-40% higher.
For a rough sleeper to be included in the count, there are strict criteria, with the government definition counting ‘people sleeping, or bedded down, in the open air (such as on the streets, or in doorways, parks or bus shelters); not people in buildings or other places not designed for habitation (such as barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations, or ‘bashes’)’.
Housing Justice Chief Executive, Kathy Mohan OBE, said:
“Today’s announcement of the snapshot count continues the evidence that the number of people in the most extreme form of homelessness crisis has fallen during the pandemic. This is welcome news and the agencies, charities, faith and community groups involved deserve huge credit for the impact they have made on people’s lives.
As we emerge from the pandemic, the government must now publish a new rough sleeping strategy, as the National Audit Office advised last year, which sets out how the task of ending rough sleeping will be achieved and the progress of ‘Everybody In’ expanded.
The new plan must learn the lessons of the last two years; that charities, faith groups and councils must work together, that the street count vastly underestimates the number of people in housing need or other forms of homelessness and intervention in welfare and the regulation of private rented housing have profound effects on the numbers of people sleeping rough.
Part of this new strategy must include the role that small charities and faith and community groups can play, not just as a safety net for someone requiring shelter but in preventing that person’s homelessness in the first place. And we must begin to seriously examine the quality of accommodation available to people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping.”
