Housing First Launched In Liverpool

Plans are being made to get long-term rough sleepers into their own home as quickly as possible by adopting the Housing First approach.

Research, commissioned by Crisis with funding from the UK government and the Housing First Europe Hub, looked at the potential costs and benefits of rolling out Housing First across the Liverpool City Region, drawing on existing evidence as well as new statistical analysis and interviews with nearly 100 professionals and 79 people with experience of homelessness. The recently released report ‘Housing First Feasibility Study For The Liverpool City Region’, shows how Housing First could deliver savings for cities and local authorities right across the UK, with potential savings for Liverpool City Region estimated at between £1.18m and £4.02m per year by 2023/24.

The report says the current system is failing some of the most vulnerable homeless people, who often struggle with the rules and conditions, stress, and lack of security in hostels, and who need higher levels of support as a result of poor mental health, substance misuse, physical or learning disabilities or a history of offending. In some cases, rough sleepers in the Liverpool City Region had had as many as 10 hostel placements in the past four years.

The Housing First approach aims to give people a stable, secure home of their own as soon as possible and to build personalised support around them, placing an emphasis on individual choice, respect and citizenship. This approach is likely to be more effective in supporting the most vulnerable and long-term rough sleepers to stay in a rented home compared to existing services in Liverpool City Region. The report also recommends that it should be used as part of a wider ‘housing-led’ system that addresses the needs of all homeless people and places emphasis on preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place.

But the idea is not without its critics. Joe Halewood, who writes an online blog (speye.wordpress.com) says: “All variants of the Housing First model require suitable properties which are almost exclusively 1-bed properties to be available. We know that 1-bed properties are in short supply as the bedroom tax and the inability to downsize has proved.”

“More significantly we have actual data in the English Housing Survey which reveals that 28.2% of all social housing has 1 bedroom. Yet we also know that the Liverpool City Region areas have a pitifully low proportion of 1-bed properties at 16.83% in Wirral, 16.72% in Liverpool, 15.03% in Knowsley, 14.96% in Sefton and just 12.41% in St Helens and that data is in the Statistical Data Return provided to the social housing regulator.”

“Housing First in the LCR area cannot work on a large-scale basis because of this. It possibly can on a smaller scale though only a few limited housing associations may take part as only a few of them have anything over 10% of their stock as 1-bed and note there are no council landlords in the LCR area.”

“It could work on a shared accommodation basis with, for example, two persons sharing a 3-bed property for which the LCR area has a surfeit of supply with the LCR areas all having more than 50% of total properties as 3-bed compared to the English national average of 36%. That shared model stacks up far better financially for social landlords however there is very little appetite for shared housing by HA’s for low risk general needs tenants so we must assume there will be even less for higher perceived risk tenants such as those who are homeless.”

You can download the report ‘Housing First Feasibility Study For The Liverpool City Region’ here: https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/homelessness-knowledge-hub/housing-models-and-access/housing-first-feasibility-study-for-liverpool-city-region-2017/