Across the world, homelessness strategies are changing for the better. How are we doing at home?

Matt Downie MBE, Chief Executive

10.10.2022

It is World Homelessness Day, which is a good excuse to step back and look at whether we can learn from countries around the world. Many countries share the same task of trying to bring an end to this most needless and devastating for of social injustice. But not all countries do it in the same way.

Homelessness is caused by shortages of housing, entrenched poverty, and systemic discrimination. It also happens on an individual level when people don’t have the financial and social capital to withstand things like relationship breakdown or losing a job. In the UK, it is often the constant pressure of high rents and low incomes that tips households into homelessness, and never more so than right now.

For me, the key test of whether strategies to deal with homelessness are likely to succeed is whether they are attempting to end it, or simply to contain, manage it. Once a country takes the important step to planning the eradication of homelessness, we start to see common principles of success emerge.

All-encompassing strategy

There are numerous homelessness strategies to compare, but those that take a long view, including a wide set of public sector reforms, are most likely to succeed.

Denmark launched exactly this sort of strategy in 2021, outlining structural reforms on rent and allocations policy, access to health and prevention services, and much else besides. Given the similarities with UK housing market pressures, this is perhaps a good example for us to follow. It is also working – Denmark is the only European country other than Finland where homelessness is reducing.

The EU has also begun a programme of supporting member states to produce comprehensive strategies, with the expert help of FEANTSA.  

Housing housing housing…

Advocates in the US point to the Reagan era housing reforms that saw the reduction in affordable housing as the beginning of their current housing emergency. It is a compelling diagnosis, given we know that the opposite policy reaps such rewards.

I have talked many times in these pages about the success Finland has had, and that remains the single most successful country-wide example, with year-on-year reductions. It is rightly the north star for any advocate in homelessness, having applied the simple principle that every person and family facing homelessness should immediately be provided quality housing (first), followed by any required support services. They have stuck to their strategy, persevered, and had breakthrough success because this policy was backed by long-term investment in the housing stock required.

De-institutionalisation

This is a horrible phrase, but it does capture the difference made to people when large-scale communal accommodation is replaced by dignified housing and support. I’ve met too many people that describe the trauma of homelessness being compounded by staying in accommodation that is barely an improvement on rough sleeping. Spain is currently going through an impressive programme of de-institutionalisation across the country and is evaluating it as they go.

Housing First is a central feature of de-institutionalisation, providing the mainstream housing and restoring dignity, and it is now being rolled out on every continent around the world, with a rapid growth here in Europe.

How does Britain compare?

Homelessness policy is devolved in Britain, meaning we have different strategies and approaches in England, Scotland and Wales.

Scotland and Wales both have national strategies that are long-term, all-encompassing and ambitious. They both include a transition to a housing-led system. Both nations now have lower rates of homelessness than England.

Scotland stands alone with globally renowned legal entitlements to rehousing. It has achieved historic reductions in rough sleeping since the pandemic, in part because of a large-scale roll-out of Housing First. The next steps will be crucial, including the delivery of additional housing, and legal changes to embed homelessness prevention across the public sector.

Wales is a following a similar path to Scotland, albeit having already legislated to prevent homelessness back in 2014, ahead of its current action plan to end homelessness. As in Scotland, progress is hampered by housing shortages, but is also committed to a large increase in social housing over the coming years.

In England, the focus of recent years has been on rough sleeping, and in its own terms the UK Government has made good strides forward in reducing it. A refreshed rough sleeping strategy was published recently, setting out how they aim to end rough sleeping by 2024.

The drawback in England is that wider homelessness and the structural causes of housing need are not acknowledged or dealt with, including chronic housing shortages and spiralling costs of rent.

UK Government polices hamper progress on homelessness across Britain, given benefits and immigration decisions are not devolved. Of most importance right now is the fact that housing benefit levels are frozen, while the costs are rising fast.

As we mark World Homelessness Day this year, there is plenty to be optimistic about, and many more examples than I have room for here, in Austria, France, Italy and beyond. There is also a warning, and one that must be heeded by the Westminster Government. The cost-of-living crisis need not mark an inevitable increase in homelessness – we could make positive decisions starting with welfare and housing policy – to begin the ending of homelessness. It is no longer a matter of evidence, but of political will.