Homelessness: Funding

Lee Pitcher Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

It is great to speak under your chairship, Mr Vickers.

On Sunday, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson), my wife and I took part in the Doncaster 10k with more than 3,000 other people. We chose to raise money for Doncaster Housing for Young People, of which we are patrons. I am pleased to say that we have raised more than £2,000 between us already. Doncaster Housing for Young People is a remarkable organisation that supports young adults who are vulnerable and at risk of homelessness. It not only provides decent accommodation, but supports them in gaining key life skills and by preparing them for the world of work. That means that, when young adults are ready to move into permanent accommodation, they have the physical and mental means to support themselves.

Why is that important to me? I come to this debate not just as a Member of Parliament but as someone who was homeless as a child. I know what it feels like when the word “home” means a room that is not really yours, and your whole life depends on decisions that are taken away from you. It somehow took until the 1970s to grasp what should have been obvious: for someone trying to recover from trauma, illness, addiction or financial catastrophe, a safe, stable home is not a luxury—it is the foundation on which everything else rests.

Today, the scale of the crisis is more stark than ever. Research in my own area of Doncaster and in the South Yorkshire area shows that 61% of people sleeping rough in December 2023 had slept rough before. Nationally, that figure is closer to 13%. That tells us something important: our system is managing crisis; it is not resolving it. We pour billions into temporary fixes, with families stuck in one room for months or years, schools disrupted, work made impossible, mental health deteriorating and people cut off from various networks that keep them safe and hopeful. We then act surprised when they fall back into homelessness and the cycle begins once again. A constituent of mine, a mum in Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme, is living in a room with a baby, and of a night time she has to go out to the service station to use its microwave to warm the baby’s milk. That is ridiculous. How is that possible in this day and age?

Housing First offers a way to break that cycle. In simple terms, it turns the old model on its head: instead of asking people to prove that they are housing ready before they get a permanent home, Housing First starts with the home and wraps support around it. It means a settled, self-contained tenancy as a first step—not the last—and intensive, flexible, person-centred support to help people keep that home. It does not make help conditional on being abstinent or already in treatment, but gives people the support they need to tackle those issues head-on. It offers that support for as long as it is needed, not just the length of a short-term programme. We are not talking about a theory; the three Housing First pilots in Greater Manchester, Liverpool city region and the west midlands have already supported over a thousand people with some of the most complex needs into independent tenancies. Around 84% of those tenancies were sustained after three years, which is remarkable given the level of trauma, poor health and repeated homelessness that people had experienced.

What do we need to do now? First, I urge Ministers to commit to a national Housing First strategy, making it the default offer for people who are repeatedly homeless or have more complex needs, and not a small pilot on the margins. That strategy should include clear targets for the number of Housing First tenancies. Secondly, we need long-term ringfenced funding. Programmes such as the rough sleeping initiative and the single homelessness accommodation programme are vital, but local areas need multi-year certainty so that they can recruit and retain specialist staff and build proper services, not live hand to mouth.

Thirdly, we should link Housing First to the Labour Government’s mission on house building. We have committed to 1.5 million new homes and the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation. A share of those generally affordable homes should be reserved for Housing First. Finally, I hope Ministers will prioritise areas with high levels of repeat homelessness, including Doncaster and South Yorkshire, as early beneficiaries of any expansion.

I know that many volunteers out there this Christmas will be helping the most vulnerable and the homeless, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart for doing that, but if I could ask Santa for one Christmas wish this year, it would be that those volunteers could be redirected into something else, and that homelessness be ended for good.