HOMELESSNESS : free tools for councils

In his keynote speech at Labour’s party conference this week, Keir Starmer said Labour will tackle obstacles holding back housebuilding and vowed to prevent home-ownership from becoming “a luxury for the few not the privilege of the many”.

The publication of Crisis’ 2023 Homelessness Monitor for England has highlighted the continuing emergency councils are attempting to alleviate through their homelessness activities. The report documents that four out of five councils have experienced an increase in homelessness traffic in the past 12 months and a 10% increase in the use of temporary accommodation (TA) over the last year. In London, where 60% of those living in TA are located, one in 50 households are living in TA.

Analysis by Crisis of available policy levers for addressing this emergency suggests that, with a comprehensive set of measures, core homelessness (including rough sleeping, living in tents and other locations unsuitable for residential accommodation, unsuitable TA such as bed and breakfast and sofa surfing) could be reduced by 37% in 2031.

Genuinely affordable homes

The comprehensive set of measures proposed include a wide range of levers designed to both stimulate supply of genuinely affordable homes and reduce demand from homeless households by preventing homelessness. Of course, many of these levers are not within councils’ powers, including ending no fault evictions, increasing Local Housing Allowance to cover the lower third of private sector rents and resolving the tension between immigration and homelessness policies.

However, in the face of this emergency, councils are having to act now, innovatively using their resources and powers to do what they can to make short term impact. These activities include increasing the supply of social housing at social rents by developing council housing on council land, increasing the supply of affordable and suitable temporary accommodation, and investing in upstream homelessness prevention work.

Free tools for councils

Local Partnerships is working alongside councils in these areas and has developed free to use tools to help with these crucial activities. These are:

Prioritising housing pipelines – A toolkit for councils to prioritise a pipeline of sites for social housing within their own and others’ property assets

A model, developed with the LGA, to help councils navigate challenges in temporary accommodation requirements in an informed way. The model utilises data on affordable housing demand and supply, temporary accommodation stock, occupancy, cost and numbers of households presenting as homeless. It was developed in a live environment with Manchester City Council earlier this year, but is replicable to other areas, and will provide an assessment of the likely future profile of household types and numbers that will require temporary accommodation, and the consequential cost to the council’s revenue budget.

An investment case for homelessness prevention activities, using the cases of two councils to understand the cost benefit ratios of different prevention work, and stressing the need to take an early, whole person and whole system response to the threat of homelessness.

We also continue to work with a large number of councils who consider, more broadly, their approach to interventions in local housing markets, to meet the current and future needs of their communities – for example in establishing, managing and reviewing the progress of housing delivery vehicles, where the development of affordable housing is frequently a key objective.

If you would like any further information or assistance on how we may be able to help your council, then please contact Jenny or Martin.