Housing Minister Yvette Cooper announced a £3 million fund, to help local authorities tackle homelessness within ethnic minority groups. The Ethnic Minorities Innovation Fund (EMIF) will provide financial support to voluntary and community groups working in partnership with local authorities, to help deliver innovative projects that will reduce levels of homelessness among ethnic minority groups.
Ethnic minority households are at a disproportionate risk of homelessness. They represented 21% of those accepted by local authorities as homeless in 2004-05, but represent only 7% of the general UK population.
The EMIF will provide grants in 2006/07 and 2007/08, and is a further strand to the Homelessness Innovation Fund announced on 13th June 2005. The Homelessness Innovation Fund will support the development of new ideas to prevent and reduce homelessness.
A guide to help local authorities change and develop their services in order to meet the varying needs of their ethnic minority populations, as well as research into the causes of homelessness within this group, were published alongside the fund.
Tackling Homelessness Amongst Ethnic Minority Households - A Development Guide and The Causes of Homelessness amongst Ethnic Minority Populations will be distributed to all local authorities in England, and to a wide range of stakeholders. The publications are also available on the ODPM website, Link.
Different views came to the boil at a summit called to discuss reducing the number of soup runs in the centre of London. Speaking at the Soup Summit, Angela Harvey, Westminster Council cabinet member for Housing, argued there was now one soup run for every two rough sleepers and said "soup runs are creating perverse incentives for people to maintain a street-based lifestyle."
Volunteers working with soup runs responded angrily. One of those voices was Chris Peacock, a soup run organiser with All Souls Local Action Network, who argued that the problem was not an over provision of soup runs, but a lack of provision of accommodation.
The quarrel between the two camps led to the event, which was organised by Westminster Council, ending earlier than anticipated.
The number of people sleeping rough on streets in England has fallen to a record low. Annual rough sleeping figures for 2005 show a 75% reduction in the number of people sleeping rough in England since 1998, from 1,850 to 459 people.
Rough sleeping figures are compiled from counts co-ordinated by local authorities. They involve a range of agencies working with people sleeping rough in the area. A single night count is a snapshot. It is the most effective means of gauging the relative scale of the problem, and of monitoring progress over time.
National Statistics also published show the number of people becoming homeless was 17% lower than in the same period the previous year.
In the second quarter of 2005 the total number of homelessness acceptances was 27,310 compared to 32,840 for the same period in 2004
This month we feature Homelessness in Wales with an article by Tamsin Stirling. The article provides a summary of recent key developments on homelessness in Wales, along with links to sources of further information.
While the overall aims of the homelessness agenda in Wales are similar to those in England, i.e. an increased emphasis on the prevention of homelessness and a wish to reduce the use of B&B, there are some important differences of detail. The June 2004 CIH Cymru briefing on homelessness No Place like Home provides some useful background, and is available online at www.cih.org/cymru/policy/key1.htm.
In July 2005, the Welsh Assembly Government's Social Justice and Regeneration Committee discussed a revised national homelessness strategy. The strategy includes a number of targets, as follows:
More work is to be carried out on the homelessness strategy over the coming months before the final version is issued. The draft version is available online at www.wales.gov.uk.
The Assembly has allocated nearly £1 million under its Homelessness Grant Programme to help local authorities prevent homelessness and reduce the number of homeless people housed in temporary bed-and-breakfast accommodation. There are 26 schemes in 19 local authorities that have been funded over the next two years, with each grant limited to £30,000 per scheme per year. The Programme will support:
The Welsh Assembly Government has consulted on legislation to reduce the use of B&B accommodation for homeless families and other households in priority need, and to raise the quality of temporary accommodation more widely. The proposals involve:
In response to the consultation paper, all organisations were supportive of the desire to increase standards in temporary accommodation and reduce the use of B&B. Concerns, however, have been expressed about a number of issues:
The full consultation paper is available online at www.housing.wales.gov.uk.
In June 2005, the Welsh Assembly Government published the Tarki Technology report Tackling Homelessness - Key issues for Welsh Local Authorities. This was produced following a general review by Tarki of the homelessness situation across Wales and detailed service reviews in four local authorities.
The key message from the report is that Welsh local authorities and their partners need to radically change their approach from merely processing homelessness applications, to early intervention to prevent the crisis of homelessness from occuring. The report has a large number of recommendations for local authorities, their partners (including Shelter), and the Assembly itself and is available online at www.housing.wales.gov.uk.
The approach advocated in the report has generated significant debate about the practicalities and principles of homelessness prevention, housing options, and the use of the private rented sector as a rehousing option for homeless or potentially homeless households.
In July 2005, the Welsh Federation of Housing Associations published a briefing emphasising the role of housing associations in providing services to prevent and respond to homelessness, for example by:
The briefing is available from the WFHA website www.welshhousing.org.uk. In June 2003, Shelter Cymru published First Contact, the results of a mystery shopping survey of homelessness services provided by local authorities in Wales. The emphasis of the report was on the first contact between people attempting to access local authority homelessness services and the way authorities responded to these enquiries. In order to assess developments in the response of authorities to enquiries since 2003, Shelter Cymru repeated its mystery shopping exercise during April 2005. Return Call found that callers were:
The full report is available on the Shelter Cymru website at www.sheltercymru.org.uk
More information about housing policy and practice in Wales is available in the Welsh Housing Quarterly - Wales' independent housing and regeneration magazine – www.whq.org.uk