“Winter is very much upon us, and the homelessness sector, as always, is working hard. Some 18 months into this government and just before Christmas, we finally get to unwrap its much-promised homelessness strategy for England.
It’s important to reflect on the scale of the challenge – in the year to March, some 360,000 households approached their local authority for help with homelessness. We have record numbers of people in temporary accommodation (more than 130,000 households) and sleeping rough on the streets of London (more than 13,000), and thousands more lacking a safe and secure place to call home.
People working on the frontline of tackling homelessness told us at St Martin-the-Field’s Charity earlier this year that 85% of them were seeing demand for their services rise and they were facing a three-pronged challenge: a lack of accommodation of all types, insufficient and uncoordinated services, and huge pressure on workers themselves and their well-being.
Local authorities across the country have been forced into using ever-more expensive temporary accommodation at the direct expense of preventative approaches and services. It will take time to turn this around, so is this new strategy up to the scale of the challenge?”