Minister For Homelessness Has No Idea

Newly appointed Minister for Homelessness, Heather Wheeler, admits she doesn’t know why homelessness and rough sleeping has exploded since the Tories took over, but denies it has anything to do with welfare reforms and council cuts.

On a visit to a housing project in Glasgow, Wheeler told The Guardian she remained “totally confident” she would not have to act on her pledge to resign should she fail to meet the Conservative manifesto commitment of halving rough sleeping by 2022, and eradicating it by 2027. “We’re going to move heaven and earth to get that done,” she promised.

Asked whether she had heard from Glasgow service users that welfare cuts were leading to greater domestic insecurity, and if she felt at odds with other government departments in her mission, she said: “I didn’t hear that, which is refreshing.”

“This is about supply. If you don’t sort out supply of affordable housing, there’s another million people living in our lovely country, we need to have greater supply of affordable housing. We are spending £9bn on affordable housing [by March 2021] because we recognise that’s what we have to do.”

Wheeler was asked about the reasons for the rise in rough sleeping, which has increased in England each year since 2010 – official figures show 4,751 people slept outside overnight in 2017. The MP for South Derbyshire said: “In truth, I don’t know. That’s one of the interesting things for me to find out over the last eight weeks that I’ve been doing the job. We’ve looked at the different cohorts, and in London the number of veterans who are rough sleepers is down to about 2%.”

Commending the “amazing job” done by armed forces charities, she went on to describe a second “classic” reason for rough sleeping: coming out of prison with no support. “It’s very difficult. We also have a real problem in London with people coming over [mainly from Europe] for jobs, sofa surfing with friends, and then the job changes and they have a problem.”

However, Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the homelessness charity Crisis, expressed his frustration at the Westminster government’s failure to recognise the influence of welfare reforms – such as the housing benefit freeze, the household benefit cap, and the universal credit rollout – on homelessness. He wrote in The Guardian: “We are asking the government through our Home: No Less Will Do campaign for £31m for help to rent schemes, and we estimate that we could help up to 32,000 households a year.”

“We cannot ignore this problem any longer. In 2017, no one should face homelessness when we know this crisis can be solved. With the right support, private renting can be a way out of homelessness – and help prevent it in the first place.”