Centre for Social Justice calls on government to implement four-year £103m Housing First programme to tackle rough sleeping

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has called on the government to take a “Housing First” approach to tackling rough sleeping– saying a national programme would cost £103m over four years and just 3.4% of the annual cost of hotels for asylum seekers. 

The report, No Place Like Home, warns that the recent explosion in homelessness and rough sleeping is “just the tip of the iceberg” with local authorities in England having spent £2.3bn on temporary accommodation last year, pushing councils “to the point of bankruptcy”. 

The thinktank recommends the government take a “Housing First” approach, describing it as “the most effective and well-evidenced intervention to end homelessness for Britain’s most disadvantaged and entrenched rough sleepers.”

Housing First combines access to permanent housing with intensive, wrap-around support. Unlike other interventions, it offers permanent housing from the start, dependent on an individual’s willingness to maintain a tenancy.

The support takes the form of staff who have low caseloads of four to six service users, rather than the more usual 20 and 40 cases.

The report highlights successful Housing First pilots in the Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands.

The CSJ says Housing First is three and a half times more effective in enabling people to secure and sustain permanent housing than conventional homeless services.

>>See also: Government to decriminalise rough sleeping by next spring

Across the pilots, Housing First had 84 per cent of users sustaining long-term housing after around three years of being on the programme. 

The CSJ says introducing a Housing First programme across England would take 5,571 people off the streets by 2029/30 – more than 10% of rough sleepers.

It estimates that a national Housing First programme would cost £103m over four years. 

It says that for every £1 invested into Housing First, up to £2 is returned to the taxpayer and society, including through savings to services like the NHS, homelessness outreach, temporary accommodation and criminal justice.

The CSJ also proposes funding its plans by scrapping relocation expenses for civil servants, a 20 per cent reduction in the programme which moves government departments into the regions, utilising the new Transformation Fund and by allocating 5.5 per cent of the Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant for Housing First.

It also claims that a four-year Housing First programme would cost 3.4 per cent of the annual cost of hotels for asylum seekers.

Andy Cook, chief executive of the CSJ, said: “Thanks to the leadership of Mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, Housing First has emerged as one of the most effective approaches to ending rough sleeping. Angela Rayner now has a unique opportunity to champion a national rollout which would be a gamechanger in the fight to end rough sleeping.” 

Writing in the foreword, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, said: “Tackling homelessness is not just an economic imperative, but also a moral mission. Housing First is simple but powerful. Safe and secure housing with no conditions attached, meaning people seek support without fear of become homeless again. If you set people up to succeed – they largely do.”