Housing Minister Yvette Cooper announced a £50 million programme to assist homeless and overcrowded families in London. At the same time there will be public consultation on options for raising outdated statutory overcrowding standards, which haven't changed for seventy years.
£30 million of the funding will be allocated to assist councils in providing settled homes for families in temporary accommodation, expanding similar schemes already operating in Newham and Ealing. This innovative approach uses Housing Benefit to help purchase homes for families who would otherwise be in insecure and expensive private sector accommodation and with no certainty about how long they could live there.
The other £20 million will be targeted at helping councils tackle overcrowding, with schemes to carry out loft extensions or provide support for single people who want to move out of family homes.
The Government will also be consulting on options for raising overcrowding standards and building them into allocation policies.
Speaking at a Shelter conference, Yvette Cooper said: "It is now 40 years since Cathy Come Home exposed all that was wrong with the welfare system. Since then, we have made great progress with higher standards of protection, which would ensure her experiences would not be repeated today.
"But overcrowding standards were out of date even in Cathy's day and they are truly shocking today. Demand for housing in London is high. The only answer in the long-term to address overcrowding is to build more homes, including bigger family homes. But in the meantime we can do more for families who are in desperate housing need today."
Earlier this year, the Government announced that the proportion of new social housing of three or more bedrooms to be built in London will be increased from 27% to 34% over the next two years of the affordable housing programme. This is part of the programme to address the problem of overcrowding and its impact on children.
Ms Cooper also announced that 12 local authorities and one housing association have been selected as homelessness Regional Champions for 2006/07. There is at least one Champion in each region and they will work with other local authorities to provide support and share good practice to prevent homelessness.
A project to help homeless people in Edinburgh's old town received funding from Communities Scotland. The Greyfriars Community Project is providing support, training, employment and volunteering opportunities to help people who are homeless, or are at risk of becoming homeless. The project has been awarded £150,000 from the Futurebuilders Scotland programme, which is managed by Communities Scotland.
The funding will help the project establish commercial activity through a shop, workshops and space to rent to other organisations. The shop will sell products made in the workshops, as well as fruit, vegetables, jam and eggs. The target is to create 10 full-time jobs, help 60 people into a job and have 200 people complete a basic skills programme by 2010. Other support includes 200 people being helped to improve their health and well-being.
Following its talks with central government departments, the YMCA announced it was to step up its work in helping to prevent youth homelessness. Programmes will see the organisation work with children as young as seven years, to help reduce the rising number of 16 and 17 year olds living in temporary accommodation. The Association is also prepared to offer more short-term supported housing for homeless young people.
Home Secretary John Reid announced that the National Asylum Support Service will move outside of the Home Office umbrella, as part of restructuring proposals. A shadow agency will take over by April 2007, which will pave the way for a new executive agency to be set up at arms-length from the Home Office.
New guidance issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government advises greater use of the private sector to tackle homelessness. The guidance recommends local authorities review the extent to which private sector landlords are offering assured shorthold tenancies to households in temporary accommodation, as well as ways of countering barriers to such offers being made.
The London-based charity Broadway was set to launch a programme aimed at matching homeless people with empty properties in the Capital. Broadway will work with the Empty Homes Agency to identify potential landlords and link them with local authorities that can provide refurbishment grants. The programme follows on from a pilot scheme run by Broadway and Hammersmith & Fulham Council.