by Phil, CEO of New Horizon Youth Centre
It’s been a week since Labour rose to power in a historic election success but seven days on and the homelessness sector is still in the dark – publicly at least – about their plans to grapple the crisis that is decimating communities across the land; we are still none the wiser who our new Minister for Homelessness will be.
But while the Prime Minister and our new Department for Communities, Housing and Local Government ponder the brief let me make a quick pitch for Patrick Vallance to take a secondment. For as our newly appointed Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, he will know better than anyone Newtons Third Law of Physics – and as the housing crisis continues to engulf us and Labour begin to grapple with it, they’d do well to remember it.
Housing is, of course, a human right. I believe this passionately. But for now it is also, though we might begrudgingly admit it, a business and a market. And crucially, because of its constituent parts, housing is a system. It is the latter definition that has, in my time in the sector at least, escaped politicians.
Newton sat under a tree, presumably at his leisure, when that apple famously hit his head and his revelations about physics came into view. Labour will not have the luxury of time that Newton had but they can, and need to, learn from the lessons it afforded him. Because even those of us who yawned our way through GCSE science might recall the golden rule: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And although Newton had imagined such laws for object A banging into object B, it works just as well for Policy A interacting with Policy B.
For whilst we are a week into Labours reign and have heard nothing of homelessness, we have heard of plans that could seriously impact it – notably the Renters Reform Bill and the other emerging crisis in Prisons.
Now it makes sense that if you’re a political party of the left that wants to be seen to be taking action, these are both necessary and important early targets. It cements a notion that what those who’ve come before failed to do, they will do. Action wins over inaction of course but it is only equal to a reaction.
Let’s take the much-debated Renters Reform Bill for instance; something that Sunak and Gove have publicly backed but failed to deliver. For an incoming Labour Government there is an oven ready policy, consulted upon and finessed by Bob Blackman of Homelessness Reduction Act fame and eagerly anticipated by the charity sector who have rightly called for it. It’s an easy target to show you’re serious about housing market reform, but there is a but – and I tread carefully voicing it out loud. The private sector has said that putting this policy in place will spook the market, cause landlords to leave and actually cause more problems in an already volatile private rented system. If the homelessness sector is right then renters get much needed security, but if the landlords are right then we get a lot more chaos and homelessness. The answer of course might lie somewhere in between.
It’s easy to say this is all scaremongering but there is a real-life example playing out in front of us already with Exempt Supported Accommodation. It’s a niche and controversial part of the housing sector that’s rightly come under scrutiny and following sector pressure finds itself with new regulations incoming. For many in the charity sector, the new legislation is a successful campaign outcome, but for organisations like the one I lead, it’s a short term disaster as supported accommodation providers leave the market, close their doors and the young tenants they house are evicted on mass.
You might think these isolated incidents, but I could go on. While the refugee sector rightly campaigned for asylum hotels to process claims faster, the homelessness sector and councils became inundated with waves of refugees facing life on the streets. And now Labour responds to the prison crisis with the assumption that we need to release prisoners early to avoid overcrowding without also first considering where they might go. If there isn’t room for prisoners in prison, then I can assure you that there is no room for them houses in the communities they want to be in. The rough sleeping statistics of last week suggest the streets are already full too.
We desperately do need reform of private housing and prisons, but we need these changes to happen across a system in unison, coordinated alongside house building, resourcing for councils and other public services.
It was Isaac Newton who also said that “man can imagine things that are false, but can only understand things that are true”. As a new Government Labour’s imagination will be in overdrive but if they really want to create lasting change then they will need to slow down too and seek a deeper understanding of the problems they inherit. Then an apple might fall from a tree for them and show them how we really put an end to homelessness for good.
