General Election: a call to end rough sleeping

Hannah Gousy, Head of Policy and Campaigns

28.04.2017

After years of campaigning, we are celebrating the Homelessness Reduction Bill receiving Royal Assent and becoming an Act of Parliament

This is the biggest change to England’s homelessness laws in four decades. It took over 80,000 Crisis campaigners, dozens of homelessness charities and politicians across the Commons and the Lords. But together we did it.

For the first time thousands of single people, who were shut out of the old system, will be offered the support they need to prevent and relieve their homelessness. We expect the changes to take effect in early 2018.

The Act is a huge testament to the incredible effort of campaigners right across the country, but also the strong cross-party political support it received during its passage through Parliament.

Building on this incredible political determination to end homelessness, we are now calling on every political party to make a clear manifesto commitment to an ambitious new national initiative to end rough sleeping ahead of the General Election.

Since 2010, the number of people sleeping rough in England has more than doubled - in 2016, more than 4,000 people slept rough on any one night. Whilst the Homelessness Reduction Act marks a huge shift forward in terms of preventing homelessness, we still need far more provision for those who find themselves sleeping on the streets.

Rough sleeping on this scale is a national scandal. But we know that change is possible. Lessons from the UK and around the world show that we can reverse the recent rise in rough sleeping. With strong political commitment and leadership, we can end rough sleeping for good.

Together with Centrepoint, Homeless Link, Shelter and St Mungo’s, we are calling for a new initiative to:

1. Prevent people from sleeping rough in the first place by using the new Homelessness Reduction Act and embedding homelessness prevention priorities across key government departments to guarantee early intervention work.
2. Provide a robust response to get people off the streets by making sure emergency accommodation is available to support people away from the streets quickly.
3. Ensure that people do not return to rough sleeping. Rough sleepers should be rapidly rehoused into permanent accommodation, including Housing First. Housing should be accompanied by a personalised package of support - and adequate help with housing costs through the benefits system - to ensure people do not return to the streets.

You can join our #EndRoughSleeping campaign by tweeting at Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn now.

(Tim Farron announced yesterday that the Lib Dem manifesto would include a commitment to end rough sleeping)