Oral evidence: Homelessness, HC 40Monday 6 June 2016
Oral evidence, 6 June 2016.
Witnesses
Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Heriot‑Watt University, and Professor Sarah Johnsen, Heriot‑Watt University, gave evidence.
Chair
Good afternoon. Thank you both for coming to give evidence to the Committee this afternoon. Can I just begin by asking you to just say who you are and the organisation you represent, please?
Professor Fitzpatrick
I am Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick. I am a professor at Heriot‑Watt University. I am a Professor of Housing and Social Policy and I specialise in homelessness research, specifically the legislative aspects of homelessness in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Professor Johnsen
I am Professor Sarah Johnsen, Professorial Fellow at Heriot‑Watt University, and most of my research focuses on homelessness, particularly rough sleeping and complex needs, and I have particular expertise in Housing First.
Chair
Thank you both for coming. Could you tell us a little bit about the Crisis independent review of homelessness legislation and what its findings were? It would be a good starting point for the Committee if you could just explain those.
Professor Fitzpatrick
I chaired the Crisis expert panel. On the panel, as you probably know, were a diverse range of representatives from the different stakeholder groups on homelessness, particularly statutory homelessness. We had some of the leading homelessness organisations. We also very importantly had representatives of the landlord bodies of social landlords and local authorities, as well as housing lawyers. That was absolutely critical to the work that was done by the Crisis independent panel because we wanted to try to develop a set of recommendations for changing the homelessness legislation in England, which had buy-in from all of those different stakeholder groups. The key recommendation, as the Select Committee is already aware, from the panel was to recommend a set of changes to the homelessness legislation in England that were inspired by what had been called generally the Welsh model, based on the Act that was passed in Wales in 2014. Do you want me to outline the key aspects?
Chair
We will come on and look at the Welsh model in some more detail a little later on in the questioning.
Professor Fitzpatrick
The main recommendation was that the legislation in England ought to be amended in order to provide greater protection for single homeless people, to bring the Housing Options approach that has become so important in terms of the response to homeless people in England inside the statutory framework, and to put prevention interventions really front stage. That was the set of objectives that we had, and we felt that the Welsh model provided a number of important innovations that would be useful in furthering those aims in England.
Chair
Just looking at the current situation, was your basic finding that some groups lose out particularly under the current legislation and are not served well by it?
Professor Fitzpatrick
Yes. The finding of the panel, and indeed the evidence that has been available for some years, is that single homeless people generally in England do not get the service that most of us would want from local authorities and indeed that local authorities would want to provide. Clearly that is rooted, in part, in the way the legislation was set up originally in 1977. It came into force in 1978 with the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act such that the priority‑need criteria excluded most single people from material assistance. They were entitled to advice and assistance but not to be given either temporary or permanent housing. Local authorities have the power but not the duty to provide accommodation to single homeless people, but generally we know that they do not. We have evidence from research that has been done from case law and from the local authorities themselves. I am one of the authors of the homelessness monitor series, which Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation fund. We do a homelessness monitor report—a state-of-the-nation report on homelessness for each of the four UK countries. In the English monitor report, we do a survey of local authorities each year and ask them a range of pertinent questions about policy and practices and what is happening on the ground in their area. We asked them last year whether they struggled to provide meaningful assistance to a range of groups, including families with children, people with complex needs and different single homeless groups. The majority said that they often struggled to provide meaningful assistance to single homeless people. Only 5% said that of families with children, but a majority said that with regard to single homeless people, particularly those with complex needs. We have a range of evidence, and really a consensus, that single homeless people do not get the help that they need to resolve their homelessness as things stand.
Bob Blackman
At the moment, vulnerability is a very important aspect when a local authority is assessing whether someone is homeless or not, and what that basis is. Do you think the bar is set too high? If so, how do you believe it should be adjusted?
Professor Fitzpatrick
Are we talking about single homelessness?
Bob Blackman
We are talking about vulnerability generally, because single homeless people at the moment, as you quite rightly say, do not really get a look in in most local authorities, unless there is some very special reason. Even with family accommodation, there are vulnerability assessments, are there not?
Professor Fitzpatrick
There are a number of different layers to that. Families with dependent children should have automatic priority need. There is no need to assess vulnerability in order to assess entitlements under the legislation. There is then another set of issues around the suitability of the accommodation offered to those families. At that point, their specific circumstances should be taken into account. Where there has been a lot of case law and controversy over the definition of vulnerability is obviously with respect to single people. You will be aware, of course, that there has been the Pereira test, which has been very influential in court cases and local authority practice, whereby it was decided that the appropriate test for vulnerability was that a homeless applicant had to be more vulnerable than an ordinary homeless person rather than an ordinary person. The threshold then seemed to be ratcheted up in subsequent case law, to being more vulnerable than an ordinary street homeless person. That is an extraordinarily high bar because street homeless people are very vulnerable, which is something my colleague, Sarah, will say more about. They are extremely vulnerable in terms of mental health issues, drug and alcohol issues, physical health issues and so on, so that bar is certainly an extremely high one. When the recent case law was put out, the Hotak and Johnson cases, that further nuanced the position on that. The Johnson case did bring the bar down somewhat, but the Hotak case compensated for that to some extent, by saying, “If people could rely on a long‑term basis on support from family and others, then perhaps that would be taken into account in vulnerability.” So, the fundamental problem is that vulnerability is used as a means of excluding most single homeless people from material assistance. My own view would be that, rather than engaging in more debate and case law around exactly where we should put the vulnerability threshold, it would be better to do something more fundamental, as we are recommending in the Crisis report, to provide material assistance to single homeless people as a whole. One of the things that has come out of a lot of the work that we have done with local authorities, through the homelessness monitor, the Crisis review panel and so on, is the frustration that a lot of local authority staff have; they feel that the way the legislation is set up at the moment, they are often unable to help the people that they view as the very most vulnerable—rough sleepers in particular—because they do not have a statutory duty to do so unless they meet this very high threshold test. There is a lot of support among many local authorities for providing more meaningful assistance to single people. I am not sure altering the vulnerability test is the best way to do that.
Bob Blackman
There appears to be a great deal of inconsistency about how housing services see their duties and the services they provide. We have just heard from a panel of witnesses with their personal experiences of a wide range of local authorities, I suspect, although we did not go into specifics. Do you think the problem is that local authorities are looking at, “Do we have a priority to house this person or this family?” compared to, “Actually, we need to point people to somewhere they can live and assist them into accommodation”? They actually avoid that responsibility. Is that the problem?
Professor Fitzpatrick
I think the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, back in 1977 when it was first passed, was a radical change and a very important step forward for homeless people, but single homeless people were always left out of that. It means that, over the last 40 years, local authorities have to work within the law, and you have had a culture that has built up—the legislation is very important in leading culture and culture change—whereby there is this very sharp division being made between priority-need cases, mostly families with children and some vulnerable single people, and single people. Local authorities, for good reasons, spend a lot of their time assessing what people’s entitlements are to ensure that they stay on the right side of the law. That makes it very difficult for local authorities—or it has in the past made it very difficult for them—to engage in the sort of problem-solving applicant‑centred approach that you would want them to undertake. Now, the introduction of Housing Options from around 2003 onwards did lead to a very sharp culture change and a very big decline in the number of households accepted as statutory homeless in England. That was a change that was welcomed by most local authorities and a lot of frontline staff in local authorities, because it meant a move away from that very priority‑setting, legalistic and rather process-orientated approach towards a more problem‑solving‑type approach. The difficulty they have is that there has been an awkward fit between the statutory entitlements people have and the Housing Options approach. That is where you get into that difficult territory about whether there is gate-keeping going on, about whether local authorities are just diverting people away from their entitlements. I am convinced that there is a lot of very good prevention work that goes on under the Housing Options umbrella in England, but because it is outside the statutory framework it is not very transparent exactly what local authorities are doing, and therefore it is not clear which local authorities are doing good work and which local authorities are gate-keeping. We do not have much research evidence on it either. The principles of Housing Options are absolutely right and command a great deal of consensus. The time has come to reconcile that with the legal framework. I would not blame local authorities for their practices. We need to provide a legal and policy framework that enables them to have that more outcomes‑focused approach, and that has been difficult for them.
Bob Blackman
How should local authority housing services be monitored? Because at the moment there is no process for monitoring them. As you say, anecdotally, some of them will be good, some of them will be bad, some may do extra things, some will provide additional services, but at the moment there is no monitoring of that all, is there?
Professor Fitzpatrick
Yes. Certainly those of us who are interested in the promotion of good homelessness practice would like to see more regulation and monitoring. I appreciate that there is a lot of wider politics around whether there should be any kind of more rolling programme of audit and regulation and so on. I look to Scotland—obviously, I do a lot of work on homelessness in Scotland—and there the Scottish Housing Regulator has been a very, very important stakeholder in the development of homelessness policy and in ensuring that there is actually a culture in Scotland that is very anti-gate-keeping. Local authorities are very concerned about being accused of gate-keeping because the Scottish Housing Regulator makes that part of the inspection programme that they undertake, which is no longer a rolling programme. It is lighter-touch than it once was. Still they do these very in‑depth thematic reports, which are taken very seriously. In an ideal world we would want to see something like that in England as well, speaking personally, but I understand from discussions on these things that it might not be something that commands consensus across the board, because clearly there are resource implications and it has to be proportionate and so on. I do think it is a gap at the moment that there is not that kind of inspection and regulation regime. You are reliant on individual cases going to court and so on; that is very important as a way of holding local authorities to account, but a more regulatory function would also be good and very helpful.
Helen Hayes
I agree with you. The regulatory framework and the framework of responsibilities that councils have needs to change. I know lots of councils are very nervous of that because of the resourcing impacts of a change in their responsibilities. I just wondered whether, as part of the review, you had looked at what a change in the duties would do to councils that are already stretched in their ability to meet the responsibilities that they have at the moment. What might be necessary to ensure that not only do they have new duties, but also the ability to meet them?
Professor Fitzpatrick
I think there we are getting into the details of the recommendations that were made by the Crisis independent review panel. The review panel was very mindful of the pressures that local authorities are under, and the increasing pressures that local authorities are under. We had three local authorities represented on the panel, albeit that everyone was there in an independent personal capacity, but they were coming from that perspective. There has been a lot of engagement outside the panel with local authorities in different fora about the new duties. The way I would characterise what we are recommending in the Crisis review report is actually not so much additional duties but reshaped duties. I am not suggesting that there would not be an upfront investment required to lead the cultural change. It will be quite a big cultural change, more for some local authorities than for others, but certainly quite a big culture change, and there will need to be some investment upfront. There is also some very significant scope for cost-savings in the longer term that perhaps we can come on to. What I would also say is in the homelessness monitor report, I mentioned earlier we do this survey of local authorities each year, and we asked them for their reaction to the Welsh model, because that is the direction that we were taking in terms of recommendations. A majority were in favour of it in terms of English local authorities; it was more evenly split in London, but it was the majority; even in London it was more or less 50/50. They were in favour of it. We asked some open questions about why they were in favour of it. There were a range of reasons. Some of that was about making better use of the resources they already have. It is not a silver bullet. What we have recommended is not going to suddenly generate lots of new houses and so on. It is about making best use of the resources that they have, by, for example, putting more emphasis on prevention, giving them longer to engage in those preventative measures, and also protecting them from allegations of gate-keeping if they try to engage and to incentivise households to engage in relief and prevention efforts, rather than go down the statutory homelessness route where they have to accept the duty to offer secure rehousing? I do not want to give the impression that there are not a lot of challenges there. There would have to be some upfront investment and some local authorities will feel that it is too challenging for them. My sense is that the majority of local authorities think that there is a good opportunity here to make better use of the existing resources that they have.
Alison Thewliss
I come from Scotland. I am going to ask a couple of questions about the experience that Scotland has been through in changing the homelessness legislation there. We have discussed the issues around priority needs, as it is used within the law in England. I was wondering if you could tell the Committee a bit more about the process we went through in Scotland to get to abolishing priority need and the impact that that has had.
Professor Fitzpatrick
I should declare an interest, so to speak, in the sense that I was a member of the Homelessness Task Force that developed proposals that eventually led to the 2003 Act and the abolition of priority need. I was involved in those discussions way back then as well. There were a number of recommendations from the Homelessness Task Force, but really the most important one involved the abolition of priority need. What that means, effectively, is that virtually every homeless person is entitled to settled, permanent rehousing. That is absolutely unique in itself, an entitlement that you would not get anywhere else in the world. It was very radical and it has won Human Rights Awards and so on, and I think quite rightly. The impact of the abolition of priority need was of course to bring single homeless people into the system. We saw an early rise in the number of acceptances from 2002-03 up until 2005-06; the number of homeless acceptances in Scotland did rise, but actually what people often do not realise is that they then started to tail off slightly. There was just an initial upsurge. We did not have this huge increase in the number of acceptances, but what we did have was a very large increase in the use of temporary accommodation in Scotland. The number of households in temporary accommodation trebled between 2001 and 2011. That was in part because the demand went up because the number of people accepted rose, but much more importantly—and this is something that the Homelessness Task Force probably had not anticipated—the number of social lettings declined over that period for unrelated reasons to do with demography and the long-term impact of the Right to Buy. It meant that it became more difficult to move people out of temporary accommodation and into social house. What we should have done, as a task force, and perhaps what the governments that were implementing it should have done, is move on the prevention agenda much more quickly than we did. We reinforced the statutory safety net without having that rigorous emphasis on homelessness prevention to minimise the number of people moving into the safety net. I think we should have taken on the Housing Options model much earlier than we did. We did it in 2010; we should have done it back in 2002-03. In Scotland the concerns about gate‑keeping would have been less so because you have the Scottish Housing Regulator keeping a careful watch on that. The ideal homelessness system that we are trying to work towards is to have the rigorous emphasis on prevention and early invention that the Welsh model and our recommendations for England are trying to achieve, so that you minimise the number of people who need to use the ultimate statutory homelessness duty. It means that at that point, hopefully, you can abolish priority need so that everyone who does find themselves homeless after all those efforts can actually be rehoused. That is what Scotland is now attempting to do because we have both abolished priority need and we have recently implemented Housing Options. That is early days; it is still to be worked through in Scotland, but it is effectively what the Welsh model is trying to achieve.
Alison Thewliss
I was very interested in some of the Welsh model things. I think one of my colleagues is going to ask you a wee bit more about that as well. I was looking through the homelessness monitor report, which has been very good, and I am very impressed with the thoroughness of which all the different issues around homelessness are examined there. There was a bit about the impact of welfare reform on homelessness and the different approaches in Scotland going forward and England. Can you tell us a wee bit more about that as well? Some of the evidence earlier on was talking about benefits and welfare reform?
Professor Fitzpatrick
Welfare reform is obviously in principle GB-wide and has had impacts on homelessness across GB, but in different parts of the country there have been mitigation efforts made. Particularly if you are talking about Scotland, there have been some very important mitigation efforts made. There have also been in England and elsewhere, but just focusing on Scotland, the Scottish Government and Parliament have done a number of things that have been very important in mitigating the impact of welfare reform and its link to homelessness. The Scottish Welfare Fund has been actually really rather an important success in Scotland, and it has really protected people in crisis in a way that has come out of other research that we have done on destitution and so on. To be fair, across most of GB it has really stopped the bedroom tax generating much by way of homelessness because of the extent to which discretionary housing payments have been used to mitigate that. There is not just the homelessness legislation in Scotland, but other aspects of housing policy in Scotland and particularly, to be honest, the fact that social housing supply is not under anything like the same pressure in Scotland as it is in England means that the impacts have not been quite so great, as yet. But there are a number of things that are extremely difficult to manage in Scotland as well as in England. I am thinking particularly of the shared accommodation rate for under‑35s; that has been very problematic throughout GB with respect to the rehousing of single homeless under‑35s. In Scotland, in particular, the proposed extension of the LHA, or the shared accommodation rate, to the social sector is going to be particularly difficult because such a high proportion, more than half, probably, of all homelessness acceptances in Scotland are single under‑35s. A lot of that social housing is no longer going to be covered by housing benefit, so there are particular issues for Scotland, going forward, in that respect. Welfare reform is very regional in its impacts all over GB. In London you have an extremely difficult situation, with the local housing allowance caps being a primary driver of homelessness, because they are interacting with this very high-pressure housing market. Elsewhere in England, there is more emphasis on the impact that the increasing or intensifying sanctions regime has had and indeed in some areas people focus on the bedroom tax. It tends to be that people talk to us a lot about the problems of the shared accommodation rate everywhere, but there are other factors, such as the benefit cap in London as well. Scotland is part of that mix. It is partly due to the mitigation efforts we have had from the Scottish Government, but quite a lot of it is the fact that the housing market looks different in Scotland and things are a bit easier for that reason.
Helen Hayes
I have some questions about the Welsh model now if that is okay. First, could you explain why the extension in Wales in relation to the risk of homelessness from 28 days to 56 days is important?
Professor Fitzpatrick
This is one of the recommendations that we call a no‑brainer, because it commanded more or less absolute consensus. I cannot remember anyone disagreeing with this recommendation from any stakeholder group. What local authorities say is that 28 days just does not give them enough time to intervene in a meaningful way. As I am sure you know, people having their assured shorthold tenancies in the private sector ended is the number one cause of statutory homelessness in England now. Once you get inside that 28 days, it can be very difficult to do anything about that. 56 days, of course, matches quite closely the notice period that is needed before people are asked to leave at the end of a fixed‑term tenancy. It is two months’ notice. It gives local authorities much more breathing space to work with people and to do something sensible. That is just on the private sector rented side. You could argue as well for other potential causes of homelessness, whether it be rent arrears or anti-social behaviour, that having that longer period of notice gives them longer to work with those households. I would say that that is one of those recommendations that really is pretty unproblematic and uncontroversial; really, it would be a bit strange if we did not do it, because it is obviously a good idea.
Helen Hayes
How effective has the prevention and relief work being undertaken by Welsh local authorities been so far?
Professor Fitzpatrick
One thing that has to be said is that it is early days. The relevant legislation has only been in force for just over a year. We only have statistical returns for the first three quarters. There is an evaluation that has just recently been commissioned by the Welsh Government that is just about to start. We should have those caveats in there. All of that said, I would be in good company by being very upbeat about what we are hearing out of Wales so far. If you look at the statistics, there has been a 67% drop in the number of households accepted as homeless in Wales. We await the evaluation behind those statistics, but by anyone’s standards that is a very significant drop. You are also seeing success rates in terms of both prevention and relief being reported that are 60-odd percent. I think it is 67% for one and 63% for the other. It is somewhat lower for single people, but still very high. Just as importantly, the anecdotal evidence we have had back from the voluntary sector as well as the local authorities is that the new is working well. When we did the last Welsh homelessness monitor, we were literally going to press just as the legislation came into force, so we were hearing what people were anticipating rather than what they were experiencing, and we did get a very strong sense at that point of the sheer extent and breadth of the goodwill that the new model was attracting My sense—and I have not done any more research in Wales since that point, but I have talked with people about it both in the context of the Crisis panel work and also other work that we are doing—is that it continues to command a high-level of consensus. There have been challenges. Some local authorities have had a big culture change to go through, others less so; others say that it was closer to what they were doing already. The sense I get is that we can be very optimistic. The evidence so far would warrant optimism. I got the sense that one of the things that worked very well in Wales was the training that the Welsh Government invested in. Very cleverly, that training was delivered jointly by the Welsh Local Government Association and by Shelter Cymru, and having those different stakeholder interests represented in the training package meant that it was very well received by the local authorities. I would be very upbeat and optimistic, but with the caveat that it is still early days.
Helen Hayes
You have partially answered my final question, but if you could just say a little more about how the new duties were received by local authorities across Wales and the support that was put in place to facilitate the transition and whether that was sufficient and how that went.
Professor Fitzpatrick
As I said, the only academic research that I have done was at the point that the new duties were just about to come into force. People had been through the training by that point. They knew what the financial package was going to be and so on, and of course there are always going to concerns about whether the resources were enough. This was a big change in culture. There were also concerns on the voluntary sector side that perhaps the new model had not achieved all that they had hoped, in terms of things like there being a duty to ensure everyone had somewhere safe to stay and so on. Like all of these things, it represented something of a compromise. The overall sense that I had, both from local authorities and from the other stakeholders at that point, was that they were very supportive of the model. They thought it was a big step forward from the previous more legalistic approach. They felt reasonably well supported, or pretty well supported, in terms of implementing it, which is not to say that there were not concerns. Some local authorities had much more ground to make up than others, so there was more concern in some areas than others. Since then, I am reliant more on what I am hearing from colleagues who are working in Wales and are doing consultancy in Wales, or are visiting Wales or are providing services there. The feedback that I have had personally is still really very positive, but that is not based on any new research.
Chair
Sarah Johnsen, should we be looking for any changes specifically with regard to people who have complex needs? That is not just homelessness but probably mental health problems, drug addiction or alcohol problems. Should we be looking to change our approach to dealing with those individuals as well?
Professor Johnsen
This is where I have my chance to push for Housing First.
Chair
I was going to ask colleagues to come in and ask about that.
Professor Johnsen
Okay, should I not? You want a more general comment.
Chair
Yes, just generally.
Professor Johnsen
Would you like me to talk about Housing First now?
Chair
I will ask my colleague.
Kevin Hollinrake
If that is the answer to the question—
Chair
Right, I have been put in my place. Off you go, yes.
Professor Johnsen
Again, Suzanne used the phrase “no-brainer” earlier, and I think that is a populism that is appropriate in this case also. There is really now consistent compelling evidence internationally from a number of countries that have implemented it using very robust randomised control trial studies and so on to show that it is an extremely effective intervention with people with long-term experiences of homelessness and complex needs, particularly substance misuse issues and/or mental health problems. Where it has been particularly successful is around housing sustainment. In all of these studies, 80% to 90% of people who have been accommodated by Housing First are still housed between one and two years later. You cannot underestimate the significance of that outcome, given that this is a group of people who have cycled in and out of homelessness and of various forms of institutional care, often for very many years. It has been extremely effective on that account, and there is certainly a call for promoting that as part of strategies to address long-term homelessness.
Kevin Hollinrake
It sounds sensible—I can see that—but there are also some downsides in terms of the effect on other members of that accommodation? If you are bringing alcohol or other substances into a hostel or supported housing that must potentially lead to some not very pleasant influences on other people in that housing.
Professor Johnsen
Housing First actually encourages the use of independent tenancies and scattered-site housing sort of within the community. Of course there are still issues and concerns around the risk of neighbourhood disturbance and so on. There are a few key differentiating feature of Housing First. One is that the tenancy should be long-term. There also should be long-term and very intensive support attached to that, and certainly what various Housing First pilots have found is that when that support is ready and available for people, the concerns about neighbourhood disturbance just do not come to fruition. What tends to happen when any concerns are raised by neighbours or housing providers is they will get in contact with the Housing First support, the team that provides support, alert them to that and then the support team will go and mitigate that. The evidence is that when that is done quickly and efficiently, it stops things escalating to a point, so the neighbourhood disturbance does not become a massive issue and it can also prevent potential for evictions.
Kevin Hollinrake
So are you saying you would not promote the Housing First type model if it was in a communal living environment?
Professor Johnsen
That is a very good question. There have been a few countries have trialled Housing First in the scattered-site housing where people are dispersed within the general community and also more congregate forms of housing. In Finland, for example, a number of former shelters, large-scale shelters, were converted to Housing First accommodation, and also in Denmark they compared scattered-site versus congregate housing and consistently the outcomes have been better for people in the scattered-site housing. Very importantly, research also consistently shows that homeless people using these services themselves much prefer the scattered-site housing. There was a massive social experimentation project funded by the European Commission called the Housing First Europe project, and that concluded that actually the congregate forms of Housing First, insofar as they are used, should be reserved for those people who do not want dispersed accommodation or have not done well in dispersed accommodation with intensive support. Certainly the architects of Housing First and most people who endorse it would promote the use of scattered-site on a number of grounds: it is what homeless people prefer; it reduces the risk of long-term institutionalisation; it mitigates any stigma attached with homeless accommodation; it can facilitate community integration; and also it ensures that homeless people are not surrounded in the long term by other formerly homeless people, who might have complex needs such as substance issues and mental health issues, because this can, as you correctly point out, create a source of conflict and can also potentially impede people’s recovery.
Kevin Hollinrake
Okay. It is great to have some reassurance for my mother, because she used to run a rehabilitation programme for ex-offenders, and she had a zero drugs and alcohol policy in that hostel. I am sure she would be pleased about that.
Professor Johnsen
If the support is there, the neighbourhood disturbance is not nearly the issue that people fear it will be. That has been quite consistently shown in research.
Mary Robinson
You have probably answered the question that I was going to ask, which was whether you thought Housing First, or the principles from it, should be rolled out in England. I am assuming that the answer to that would be “yes”, but I just want to then put a contrary experience, which is from one of our previous sessions where a representative from Manchester City Council, and another from Bristol City, expressed doubts about it, basically raising the prospect that people could find it an easy route to getting to housing, by declaring themselves homeless in that way.
Professor Johnsen
Housing First has generally been used with people with the most extreme, complex experiences—people who have been historically very service-resistant and the ones who have cycled in and out of homelessness and so on. Yes, there is a complicated issue about the kind of fairness of people potentially queue-jumping in a context where social housing particularly is very, very scarce. However, there is a kind of moral case for supporting these people who are extremely vulnerable and often have forms of trauma dating back to childhood, but also there is an economic case. Again, research has consistently shown that Housing First is cost-effective and has the potential to deliver quite extreme cost savings and therefore it will cost the public purse less. We do not have the same degree of evidence in the UK to showcase the cost-effectiveness of Housing First as is the case elsewhere. In the United States, for example, they were showing that it can save—I cannot remember the statistics exactly off the top of my head—in the order of thousands of US dollars per year, compared with providing communal hostel accommodation, shelter and so on. In the UK what we have heard is that because the pilots have been so small—they are 10 to 20 people—it is very difficult to evidence the cost savings attached to that. What has been shown by some research conducted by the University of York is that actually it is almost certainly not going to cost any more than hostel accommodation and it has the potential to cost an awful lot less.
Mary Robinson
Would you say on that basis that it should be extended in England?
Professor Johnsen
Yes.
Chair
I have one question about the wider approach to housing homeless people, because in the end we are talking about the allocation of a scarce resource—social housing. There are other people in priority need as well; people may have been on the waiting list for 10 or 15 years, and they may resent the fact that someone who has not been on the housing list, or has been on a very short time, gets a council house that they have been waiting 15 years for and still have not got. So how far does housing policy take account of these competing needs, where it is not just about housing homeless families but actually trying to meet needs of other people as well?
Professor Fitzpatrick
Perhaps I will kick off and then Sarah might want to join in. Just picking up the point on Housing First, I want to reinforce that I am very much of the same mind as Sarah on this and think that the rolling out of Housing First in England should be a priority for Government because the evidence is just so strong that it is the right model. The number of people involved in that very complex needs end of the spectrum is actually relatively small, in terms of the number of people in any one local authority who are in that category. They are also in very extreme forms of need. They also cost the taxpayer a lot of money in terms of the other public services that they use, for very poor outcomes. Therefore, I think there is both an economic and a moral case, as Sarah said, on Housing First. On the wider issue of statutory homelessness and people who are homeless and perhaps who have some other issues but not the more extreme cases we are talking about in terms of people who have been sleeping rough for many years, there is a balance to be struck. I would agree with that. One of the concerns, going back to Scotland for a moment, is that we got into a position, when we abolished priority need, that it was approaching more than half of all social housing allocations were going to statutory homeless households, and personally I felt that was too many and a lot of people felt it was too many, because you do need space for these other groups as well. That reinforces the case for the Housing Options/Welsh model whereby, when you are faced with a homeless person, you do want to try to do your best to resolve their problem but that is not necessarily about the allocation of social housing. In the allocation of social housing, they should have reasonable preference because I think that it is a very important principle that we should allocate based primarily on housing need. Other factors are important but I think housing need is very important. However, I do not think that we should think of homelessness policy entirely as being about the allocation of social housing. I think that is partly what the Housing Options model helped us move away from. You can resolve people’s homelessness in other ways. Homeless people should have reasonable preference in social housing allocations but I would not take the view that they should have overriding preference over everyone else. We should always ensure that there is space for the other medical and other priority groups and, to some extent as well, to take account of other public policy objectives, such as ensuring that people can be mobile and take up work. What I would not want is to see us going to the other end of the extreme, which is sometimes suggested, where we move away very radically from social housing being allocated on the basis of need and instead being allocated on the basis of “deserve”, if you like. We can see from the past, from before we had homelessness legislation, that that can lead to the exclusion of the most vulnerable and the poorest and the people who are in greatest need and that is a very retrograde step. But it is getting the balance right and ensuring that we take steps such that there are a range of options that we look at for homeless people and not just the allocation of social housing.
Chair
Thank you very much indeed for coming this afternoon to give evidence to the Committee on this important subject. Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Homelessness, HC 40 21