Homelessness

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I met a former constituent today at a community event in my constituency. I first met her two years ago when she was being evicted, with her young children, from her private sector home while she was receiving treatment for cancer. She was moved out of my constituency into temporary accommodation—and two years later, she is still there. She said to me, “I saw something about homelessness on the news this morning. Is that about people like me? Are they going to do something?” I would like to be able to say to her at the end of this debate, “Yes, the Government have made a commitment to sort out homelessness.”

Late last night, I checked my emails and found a message from a constituent whom I have been supporting over a number of issues in the past few months. He wrote that he had come home to find that his private landlord had changed the locks, leaving him, his wife and two very young children, who were running a fever, out on the streets with nowhere to go.

The other week, I saw a constituent in my surgery who was crying as she told me how hard it is to be living in temporary accommodation. She said, “It’s living out of boxes and bags. All I want is to make a home for my kids, but I can’t while we are living out of boxes and bags.” These stories are devastating, but they are absolutely typical of the experiences of thousands and thousands of people who are not sleeping rough, but who nevertheless do not have the security of a permanent home. There are 1,800 families, including 5,000 children in temporary accommodation in Lambeth—families who are facing Christmas without the essential security and comfort of a home. That is a disgrace.

I am pleased to support the Homelessness Reduction Bill and I have been working with colleagues on its detail. It responds directly to evidence we heard in the Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry into homelessness that the statutory framework governing support for homeless people is not fit for purpose and is not working because it allows too many people to go unsupported. Absolutely critical to the success of this Bill is the Government’s commitment to resource it and the level of the resource that they provide. We are almost at the end of the Committee stage of the Bill, but we still do not know how or at what level the Government will resource councils to implement the new duties and burdens that the Bill can introduce. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity in his summing up speech to give some confirmation.

The Homelessness Reduction Bill is an important and necessary reform, but it is important for the Government to recognise that it addresses only one part of the problem. Supply is fundamental, but so is the nature of that supply. Evidence heard by the Communities and Local Government Committee in our inquiry into capacity in the homebuilding industry points to key skills shortages in the construction sector, but also to a private sector that is maxed out in the number of homes that it can deliver.

Our Committee returned this morning from a visit to Berlin, where we learned about the significant public sector resource—land, low-cost loans and direct public subsidy—that goes into delivering high levels of social housing at genuinely affordable rates. We have delivered the number of homes needed to keep pace with demand in the UK only in the post-war period when the public sector was directly delivering many thousands of homes.

I await the housing White Paper with anticipation, and I hope to see in it the policies we need to make a huge shift in the rate of homebuilding in this country. In the meantime, we are left with the private rented sector. I sat through weeks of debate last year on the Housing and Planning Act 2016—devastating legislation that did nothing about the single biggest cause of homelessness. While I support the banning of letting agents’ fees to tenants, that is only one issue in a sector urgently in need of reform. We need better security of tenure, and particularly in London we need to be able to limit the rate of rent increases that can be charged within the terms of a tenancy.

The Government must not be complacent in thinking that support for the Homelessness Reduction Bill means that they can tick the box for having solved homelessness. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to set out today what the Government will do to fund genuinely affordable homes, to increase the rate of homebuilding and to reform the private rented sector, so that we can end the scandal of homelessness.

I end by paying tribute to the organisations in my constituency and across the country that will support homeless people this Christmas, helping homeless families through food banks or providing direct shelter and food to those in need, and to the many volunteers who help to make those operations happen. They are a reminder that we are a compassionate nation. We recognise homelessness as a scandal that shocks and horrifies us, and communities across the country want the Government to sort it.