At New Horizon, we see every day how housing underpins everything, from health, to education or employment opportunities, from safety to access to basic needs and healthy food. We’ve also shown how child and family poverty and inequity directly create a ‘pipeline’ of young adults being forced straight into hardship and harm as soon as they turn 18. This week we’ve seen the release of several government strategies, covering child poverty, young people, and today homelessness. We’ve spent the past 2+ years campaigning through the #YouthHomelessChapter collective to make sure youth homelessness is recognised and resourced as a distinct issue.
Youth Strategy
From the DfE’s ‘State of Nation’ report, used to inform the Youth Strategy, the cost of housing was recorded as the most important political issue to 14-24 year-olds in the UK, with many saying that the housing situation is likely to worsen over the coming decade.
The accompanying National Youth Strategy Survey showed that 16-25 year-olds were the group most likely to want the government to provide more affordable housing (19%).
We were surprised and disappointed to then see no recognition of housing in the resulting strategy and the calls to action. While housing & homelessness sits clearly within the National Plan to End Homelessness, there is a clear need for more education around housing rights and advocacy, youth voice movements around the cost of living and housing crisis and understanding of housing within the wider youth sector.
National Plan to End Homelessness
We’re pleased to see a dedicated section to young people, recognising them as a distinct group with distinct circumstances, needs and solutions. We are also encouraged to see a prevention focus, as we’ve long campaigned that youth homelessness interventions are some of the best preventative tools we have to tackle the UK’s housing crisis.
There are clear links to the other strategies, particularly the youth strategy, which indicates how this will work cross department. We’d caution that the youth strategy only covers up to age 21 (up to 25 only for those with SEND needs) and would miss a large part of the cohort we work with at New Horizon. We’ve compared today’s plan to the #YouthHomelessChapter specific policy asks, to see which will be coming into action:
Overall we think that about half of the #YouthHomelessChapter asks have been included, which is a really positive step in the right direction. We were also pleased to see a commitment around improving standards for advocacy. We’re keen to hear more about the promised Youth Homelessness Prevention Toolkit and would welcome the opportunity to worth with government on this to ensure it includes all young people facing homelessness.
The things we were disappointed to not see include:
- There remains no inclination if this government is willing to tackle the unfair financial imbalance of lower rates of benefits for under 25. This remains a significant barrier for young people moving into independence. Similarly, there was no mention of unfreezing and increasing Local Housing Allowance except for stating that it remains ‘under review’
- Whilst it’s great to see comprehensive prevention plans, if we’re going to solve the youth homelessness crisis we need to some significant steps on increasing youth-specific housing projects and support services. Our question remains; as young people are consistently the fastest growing age group forced into homelessness and rough sleeping, will they receive the corresponding share of resources and services?
- The Plan itself doesn’t include much new funding, more a compilation of funds previously announced from existing strategies and initiatives. We’re concerned this is not a big enough investment to meaningfully change the unfair systems that fail the young people we support on a daily basis.
Overall, we’re concerned that there seem to be noticeably less new commitments and resources for young people in comparison to the other groups singled out in the strategy, and few specific housing commitments. In order to see an impact within this Parliament we need to see the prevention agenda move quickly. But that won’t help the young people already in our day centre, already in crisis and desperately in need of appropriate and affordable housing.
Our message remains the same; young people experience homelessness differently to other groups and therefore need specific, timely and holistic support. Whilst the Plan and its recognition of some of their unique needs, there remains a lot of work to be done to tackle this problem. We look forward to working further with the #YouthHomelessChapter collective to collaborate with the government on delivering the plan and further campaigning to ensure young people get fair representation and resources. If we’re serious about ending the UK’s housing and homelessness crises, young people must be a top priority. For you can’t end homelessness without ending youth homelessness first.
