House ‘Built In A Week’ Could Help Solve Housing Crisis

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The Liverpool City Region can be at the forefront of tackling the UK’s housing crisis as a house built in just seven days was unveiled as part of a new strategy to deliver zero energy bill homes, reports the Liverpool Echo.

To unveil the Future Homes LCR plan, a specially constructed house – made entirely off-site in the space of a week – was on display outside ACC Liverpool. The unveiling of the Future Homes LCR house coincides with the opening day of the Housing Community Summit, a joint event from the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation. The scheme is a public-private alliance which aims to accelerate the development of ultra-low carbon housing across the region, offering a sustainable solution to the housing crisis.

Leaders hope the plan will position the region as a centre of excellence for zero-carbon, low-energy-cost homes. Using Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) such as offsite manufacture, houses can be completed within a week and have estimated heating, hot water, and lighting bills of £124-a-year – or even zero, in some cases. The homes are constructed and part-assembled off site. The Future Homes LCR waterfront house was built using a light-gauge steel frame, clad with insulation and brick slips to create a super-insulated, airtight building with an energy performance rating of 100%.

The two-storey project was delivered by the Wirral- based Starship Group and will remain in place during the period of the Labour Party later this month. It will then be disassembled and rebuilt at Starship’s Wirral Waters campus and become a prototype house used to promote MMC, and for training purposes.

Cllr Graham Morgan, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority cabinet member for housing and regeneration, said: “We’ve got some world class providers within the city region. The building we’re in has been built by Starship on the Wirral, two weeks in the factory and two days to install. The facilities, you wouldn’t think you were in a modular build house. It’s well built, it’s well insulated and I think it’s the way forward. I’m not saying it’s the answer to all our problems but I think it can make a hell of a difference.”

Cllr Morgan added: “If we can win the confidence of the government, I think it can make a massive difference to the city region. We’ve got an excellent track record over the last few years in terms of doing things like the retrofitting of homes and I think we’re in a good place to deliver nationally. With every house that’s built, it creates one job. There’s a lot of people, the traditional house builders who may have to disappear off for days to a site, but this is all inside a factory and that may appeal to a lot of people like carpenters, brickies, you still need them.”

A development of 13 modular homes, Greenleas, is already underway in Wallasey on the Wirral, also built by Starship Group and supported by £195,000 from the Liverpool City Region Brownfield Land Fund and Homes England. The build is part of a broader ambition to harness modular building techniques to make full use of the 700 brownfield sites in the Liverpool City Region, which have the potential to accommodate 42,000 homes.

New Renters’ Rights Bill Would Ban ‘No Fault’ Evictions

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A new Renters’ Rights Bill, introduced to Parliament today, would ban ‘no fault’ evictions and extend Awaab’s Law to the private rental sector, reports Housing Today.

The new legislation goes beyond the measures proposed by the previous Conservative government in its Renters Reform Bill, which failed to pass into law before the general election was called in the summer. As well as abolishing Section 21 evictions for both new and existing tenancies, the legislation would also introduce other protections for tenants. The Decent Homes Standard will be applied for the first time to the private rented sector, where 21% of homes are currently considered non-decent. Landlords who fail to address serious hazards could be fined up to £7,000 by local authorities and may face prosecution for non-compliance.

The government believes the new rules, which would require a landlord to provide a valid cause to end a tenancy early, will end a major driver of homelessness. Last year, nearly 26,000 households faced homelessness as a result of a Section 21 eviction and had to go to their council for support. Deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, said: “Renters have been let down for too long and too many are stuck in disgraceful conditions, powerless to act because of the threat of a retaliatory eviction hanging over them. Most landlords act in a responsible way but a small number of unscrupulous ones are tarnishing the reputation of the whole sector by making the most of the housing crisis and forcing tenants into bidding wars. There can be no more dither and delay. We must overhaul renting and rebalance the relationship between tenant and landlord. This Bill will do just that and tenants can be reassured this Government will protect them.”

The application of Awaab’s Law to the private sector will require landlords to follow strict timescales to inspect and repair hazards, including damp and mould. The legislation would also introduce a ban on rental bidding wars, in-tenancy rent increases and the abolition of blanket bans on tenants with children or those in receipt of benefits. A new private rented sector database would also be created to inform tenants and help councils focus on enforcement.

Rachael Williamson, head of policy and external affairs at Chartered Institute of Housing welcomed the bill as a “significant step towards creating fairer, more secure housing for millions of renters”. “Everyone should have access to safe, affordable, and stable homes, with clear redress if needed,” she said. “We look forward to working with the government to support the Bill’s implementation, helping to build a housing system that meets the needs of all.”

Tom Darling, director of the Renters’ Reform Coalition, commended ministers and officials for making the bill one of the first introduced in this parliament. “This is a stronger piece of legislation than the previous attempt, it includes longer eviction notice periods and a longer eviction-free ‘protected period’ from the start of a tenancy,” he said. But he warned that “abuse” of eviction powers under the new system “could be rife”, citing lessons learnt from Scotland’s attempts at renter reform, and said it was “ essential the bill contains thorough safeguards”. “Finally, this draft law has little to say about one of the biggest issues facing renters – cost. ‘Economic evictions’ through rent rises are a major factor in homelessness and insecurity,” he said.  “We will continue to call for a cap on rent increases within tenancies, to keep more renters in their homes for longer.”

Ian Fletcher, director of policy (real estate) at the British Property Federation, said his organisation welcomed many of the bill’s provisions. “Our primary concern remains the ability of the courts to deal with the increased workload that will come their way without s21, which is why we had taken a hard line with the previous Government to secure court improvements ahead of the legislation being passed,” he said.

A series of amendments added to the last government’s attempt at renter reform, ultimately shelved, would have resulted in the indefinite delay of ending Section 21 evictions until a review of the courts system was completed. “We can see why the new Government wants to inject new pace into reform, and it has made some reassuring commitments to continue to improve the courts,” said Fletcher. “Without court reform and improvement, the new system won’t work well and deliver fair access to justice.”

Four Things The Government Can Do To End Homelessness

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Angela Rayner will lead a cross-government taskforce to tackle record-high homelessness. Here are four things the group must do immediately, according to Homeless Link’s Rick Henderson in the Big Issue.

The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) have announced that Rushanara Ali has taken on the homelessness brief, meanwhile Angela Rayner announced she will chair an Inter-Ministerial Group on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping. With over 150,000 children currently trapped living in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping rising at a truly alarming rate, this clarity in responsibilities and direction is hugely welcome. Despite the current bleak picture, ending homelessness in England is possible with the right steps.

Ensure access to genuinely affordable housing

Ensuring people on low incomes have access to truly affordable housing is the single biggest step we can take to prevent homelessness, both now and in the future. The government has already made encouraging promises on this, with Angela Rayner promising a ‘council house revolution’. Alongside this, its planned Renters’ Rights Bill must finally end section 21 evictions, one of the major causes of homelessness in recent years, providing real security for the ever-growing number of people forced to live in the private rental sector.

Meanwhile, the local housing allowance rate, which governs how much housing benefit people can claim, is set to be re-frozen again in April. Reversing this and making sure it at least covers the lowest 30th percentile of market rents will be key to helping people on low incomes find affordable places to live.

Introduce a homelessness funding system that works

Homelessness services work in communities across the country, providing accommodation and/or expert, holistic support to people who often struggle with issues such as substance misuse, mental health issues and offending behaviour.

In 2021, the previous government announced three years of homelessness funding for local authorities to fund responses to homelessness. This ends in just over six months, with homelessness services across the country facing the deep uncertainty of a funding cliff edge. To stop the risk of a total collapse of the homelessness system, in the upcoming Autumn Budget, we’re calling for the government to rollover the existing funding for 2025/26, factoring in an uplift in line with the prolonged period of high inflation service providers had to operate in.

But the homelessness sector has faced crisis for years. Our research found that the number of bed spaces for people experiencing homelessness have fallen by nearly a quarter since 2010, while homelessness has soared. Current spending on homelessness is hugely expensive and insufficient. Severe cuts to support funding have forced providers to rely on enhanced housing benefit to remain viable, with the previous government admitting having lost control of housing benefit spending. Meanwhile, contracts for service providers are often very short-term, giving little scope for services to plan for the future.

The new government must urgently regain control through a systematic review of all homelessness-related spending, both within and beyond MHCLG. Spring’s spending review offers the perfect opportunity to commit to developing a new ring-fenced homelessness funding system which runs at least until the end of this Parliament.

Stop the flow of homelessness from institutions

The number of people leaving institutions homeless has been growing steadily over the last five years, increasing by 126%. We know that transition from institutions can put people at greater risk of homelessness and that means we should be targeting our help to prevent this wherever possible.

Yet the latest statutory homelessness data, for January to March 2024, showed the number of households owed a homelessness relief duty by local authorities after leaving accommodation provided by the Home Office increased by 348% compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of people approaching councils as homeless after leaving prison also jumped significantly.

These statistics demonstrate how a siloed approach to homelessness is a huge barrier to ending it. The sudden rise in people experiencing homelessness after leaving Home Office accommodation was a result of the previous government changing the eviction procedure, reducing the time newly recognised refugees had to find longer-term accommodation. The new homelessness taskforce must learn from this and make sure government departments collaborate closely to not inadvertently drive homelessness up. The current prisons crisis represents a key first test of this approach.

Create a national Housing First programme

The Housing First approach to homelessness is focused towards people with multiple and complex needs such as entrenched rough sleeping, substance misuse, mental health issues and criminal behaviour. It’s based on a set of seven key principles and posits that people should be given their own home and unconditional intensive support alongside this, giving them the stability and assistance to address the underlying causes of their homelessness.

Whilst dealing with the housing supply is important for this to be successful, Housing First goes much further than just bricks and mortar, helping people with histories of complex trauma and instability to build a sense of home, agency and self-worth. It should form a key part of a homelessness system that offers a diverse array of services. Research has shown that not only does Housing First work extremely effectively in ending people’s homelessness but it also helps to address health and social care needs, and reduce offending behaviour, and in doing so saves public money in the long-term, with £1.56 saved for every £1 spent.

The previous government funded three Housing First pilots in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region. But elsewhere the short-term nature of homelessness funding makes it difficult for local authorities to commission a service that is meant to provide open-ended support to people.

Creating a national Housing First programme, which delivers funding specifically to communities based on estimated level of need, with a programme director who works collaboratively with organisations to ensure fidelity to the approach’s core principles, would go a long way to expanding the provision of Housing First across the country.

Homeless People Stuck In Limbo

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People stuck in homeless accommodation are left in limbo as finding affordable private rental homes feels impossible, reports Property118.

A report by independent researcher Becky Rice on behalf of charity Commonweal Housing reveals many homeless people are unable to leave their homeless accommodation due to the rising costs of rent. A 2022 survey by the homelessness charity Homeless Link found that more than 40% of people in homeless accommodation were ready to move on but unable to due to a lack of affordable options.

Data from the largest shelter provider in London shows that the number of clients it has moved into the PRS has decreased by almost half (43%) over the last three years, despite growing demand for these services. The report shows that without a smooth transition from services like hostels and shelters, a backlog has formed. This means those needing help can’t get in and are left sleeping rough.

According to Homeless Link, in 2022, more than two-thirds of services had to turn people away due to capacity issues. Interviewees in the report shared a range of concerns, with many feeling trapped and desperate. They described the lack of access to private rental housing for those ready to move on as “deeply traumatising”. Some respondents described available PRS accommodation as “hovels,” which were cramped and lacking basic amenities like a shower or a table.

Commonweal Housing urges the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) to prioritise creating a fairer, more accessible private rental sector (PRS) as a key step in ending rough sleeping.   The charity also recommends the Department for Work and Pensions should expand programs that help people move from supported housing into jobs, allowing them to save for a deposit and secure private rental homes.

Ashley Horsey, chief executive at Commonweal Housing, said: “While much has been said about the private rental market these past two years, particularly from the perspective of ‘Generation Rent’, next-to-nothing is being said or done for those who cannot rent. Their access to independent housing, employment, and a fresh start is denied often by no fault of their own. Before any new legislation starts its passage through Parliament, those living on the margins and forgotten before must be given centre stage.”

They added: “The solutions to the problems that Becky Rice has highlighted and so powerfully articulated by those working with and struggling in this broken system can and must be addressed. We now call on colleagues in the sector and across policy to bring forward a coordinated and cross-departmental set of measures to ensure that everyone can access work, and a safe, secure and affordable home.”

Homeless Camp To Be Cleared

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Legal action has been taken by Transport for London (TfL) to clear a strip of land in the middle of Park Lane in central London occupied by homeless people, reports the BBC.

The land is managed by the transport authority, which was granted a possession order by Central London County Court last month. TfL said of the dual carriageway by Hyde Park: “Park Lane is a busy part of the road network that is not a safe place for people to sleep rough, and our focus is on the safety and welfare of everyone involved.”

On a recent visit to the encampment, about 15 tents were visible, as well as items including tables, a shopping trolley and a washing airer. Two men at the site said about 40 people were living there. It was not clear how long the encampment had been there.

A TfL spokesperson added: “We are now ready to follow the next stages of the legal process towards gaining possession of the site in consultation with our partner agencies.” One local business asked why the tents could not be relocated, adding the area was being used “not only to live in but as a lavatory”. TfL said it was “closely monitoring” the situation and working with partner agencies to prioritise the “safety and welfare of everyone currently sleeping rough there”.

St Mungo’s, a charity that works with people experiencing homelessness in London and other cities, said: “Our clients have often faced overlapping challenges, like poor mental and physical health, substance use issues, social isolation, unstable family relationships and trauma. Social stigma makes sleeping rough more likely, and even more dangerous.”

In 2021, Westminster City Council staff had to clear piles of rubbish and dismantle tents after a previous encampment left the same Park Lane strip of land. It was thought to have been occupied for about seven years.

Homeless Busker’s ‘Incredible’ Encounter Changed His Life

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Dozens of people turned up at a pub to show their support for a busker who has recently gone viral on TikTok, reports the Liverpool Echo.

John Metcalfe, a homeless man who was filmed playing his guitar and singing outside a McDonald’s drive-thru, said the reaction to the video has been “crazy”. “It’s been incredible to see people come together like that, especially around me”. John was sat outside McDonald’s near Great Homer Street, when Stephen Flynn drove through the drive-thru to get some breakfast with a friend.

They spotted John with his guitar and asked him to sing a song. The video was an instant hit online, and within days John, 59, was asked to play at The Slaughter House in the city centre, while thousands of pounds have been raised to support him. On Wednesday evening, John played his guitar to a large crowd, who were clapping and singing along with him, enjoying the music.

Overwhelmed by the support, John told the Echo: “The reaction has been incredible. People have been so beautiful, so nice and so generous. The messages have been one of hope and love and it’s been incredible to see people come together like that, especially around me. I can’t believe it. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, and in my hometown. I’m mind blown.”

When Stephen posted the video on TikTok, he had 11 followers on his account, steflynn748. Before he knew it, the video had almost 11 million views and over 930,000 likes, and Stephen had amassed almost 23,000 followers. A GoFundMe page has raised thousands of pounds to help John.

John was bewildered with how things have blown up online. He said: “Stephen only had 11 followers, and from that, boom! It’s incomprehensible. That those 11 people can be connected to that many people out there. It’s incredible.” John, who picked up a guitar on his travels, said he plays guitar to keep him “sane”.

He said: “In the old days you had to have a way of making money to survive. That’s why I learnt to play guitar. I play as a spiritual thing. I need to. It’s like praying, I guess. It’s a connection to a higher power. It’s what keeps me sane and gets me through the bad times. I like playing with other people, especially. I’m hoping one of my sons will come over to see me soon. The kids grew up around music. We always had a music room and everyone would come around in the night time and play music. We didn’t have electricity, so we just made music.”

The Slaughter House, where John played his gig, also put him up for the night. He said: “This is the first time I’ve had a bed to sleep in since February. It’s the first time I can sleep lying down in six months.” When asked about others facing homelessness in the city, he said: “You’ve always got to have hope. That’s the trouble on the streets here. Most people have given up.”

John claims a travel ban has been placed against his name across the Schengen zone, which covers 29 countries in Europe including Spain and Norway. He says once it is lifted, he will aim to return to Norway with Hege and travel to see his children who live in rural parts of southern Spain. He added: “I haven’t got anything here. I have something going in a lot of countries. I have a place in Spain and a place in Norway, and I travel over land, and in between there’s a lot of places where I have something on the go. France, Holland and Norway, I have a life in these places.”

The Cost Of Homelessness

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Councils in England spent a record £1bn on temporary accommodation for homeless families in the past year, reports the BBC.

This is more than 50% higher than the year before, driven by record numbers of families living in short-term housing, including over 150,000 children. Councils spent £417m accommodating families in hostels and bed and breakfasts, a 63% increase on the year before. The Labour government has said it inherited a housing crisis that has “left families stuck living in temporary accommodation”. In a statement, a housing ministry spokesperson said the government would deliver on its target of 1.5 million homes and “prevent homelessness before it occurs” by banning no-fault evictions. Experts say soaring private rents, a lack of house-building and increased eviction rates have made homelessness a chronic problem.

Romel Peters, 37, has been stuck in temporary accommodation in London with her two young sons for over a year after being served a no-fault eviction by her private landlord. The family all sleep in one room, while the “filthy” cooking and washing facilities are shared with other tenants. “I can’t even describe how dirty the place is. I don’t cook here, my family cook and bring us food or I will cook at my mum’s house. I’ve gone into the kitchen to cook food and there have been cockroaches around the microwave,” she said. She worries about the impact on her children, who have little space to play or do their homework, while most of their toys are in storage.

Romel had been on her local council’s housing list for almost a decade when she was evicted – only to be told she was no longer eligible because she had previously been renting privately. “I’m devastated, I’ve been trying to contact the council for 18 months and no case worker has ever contacted me [back].

“I tried to find something myself and join housing associations, but they need a referral from the council and for weeks they got no reply.” The council now want the family to move to temporary accommodation three hours away in West Bromwich. As she doesn’t want to leave her family network or the children’s school behind, she refused – and the council says it no longer has a duty to help her. The family now face being homeless again as she cannot afford the increased cost of renting privately.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show average rent increases across the UK ranged from 8.6% in England through to 8.2% in Scotland and 7.9% in Wales. Northern Ireland’s data lags behind the rest of the UK, with figures currently available up to the end of last year. The ONS reported a 10% increase in the country for the year to May 2024. High inflation – in part caused by the Covid pandemic and high energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine – has kept rent prices high.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “It’s absurd that we keep throwing good money after bad into grim homeless accommodation instead of investing in solutions that would help families into a safe and secure home. Decades of failure to build enough social homes combined with runaway rents and rising evictions has caused homelessness to spiral. Too many children are being forced to grow up homeless in grotty, cramped hostels and B&Bs, sharing beds with their siblings, with no place to play or do their homework. Rather than sinking billions into temporary solutions every year, the government must invest in genuinely affordable social homes and support councils so they can start building them.”

Shelter is calling on the government to build 90,000 social homes over the next decade. They and other housing charities point out the real cost of homelessness to the public is even higher. They say the figures, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, show £2.3bn was spent paying for households in temporary accommodation once housing benefit, which is paid by the government, was included. Housing is not just a problem in England – the devolved nations are equally under pressure.

In Scotland, the government has declared a national housing emergency. It is offering targeted funding of £2 million in 2023 to 2024 to the local authorities facing the most significant temporary accommodation pressures. The latest data on spending on temporary accommodation in Wales has risen from £5.6m in 2018, to £42.9m in 2022 – a seven-fold increase – based on data from 20 out of 22 councils. There are also problems in Northern Ireland – the country’s Housing Executive chief executive Grainia Long says there are 11,000 placements in temporary accommodation, compared to 3,000 before the Covid pandemic.

Missed Opportunities To Prevent Homelessness In Scotland

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The housing charity Crisis’ latest report found that interviewees had contacted a total of at least 80 services prior to becoming homeless, reports Housing Today.

Opportunities to prevent people from becoming homeless in Scotland are “repeatedly being missed”, according to a report by charity Crisis.

Based on in-depth interviews with 15 people facing homelessness, the report found that they had been in contact with an average of five services before becoming homeless. Almost all of the interviewees had been in touch with local authority housing services in the six months prior to becoming homeless.

The report found that the 15 interviewees had collectively contacted at least 80 services before becoming homeless.

The report ‘A Window of Opportunity’ states that the Scottish government must clarify the responsibilities of both housing and non-housing staff in identifying housing instability and delivering the necessary support. It also advises the Scottish government to establish a national communications strategy to educate the public around triggers for housing instability, and how, when and where to seek help locally and nationally. The report also emphasises that coordination between councils, health services, community organisations and other support networks is essential.

As part of this, Crisis recommends greater collaboration by ensuring different public bodies’ case management systems allow data to be shared quickly between relevant partners where information-sharing consent is given. There should also be clear cooperation arrangements between services who play direct or indirect roles in securing or sustaining homes. Another key recommendation is for the government to create resources similar to the Scottish Financial Health Check, allowing individuals to assess their risk of losing their home, identify risk factors, and access details of local and national help available.

The chief executive of Crisis, Matt Downie, said: “The cost of these missed opportunities to prevent homelessness is massive. For individuals, it means suffering and stress that could have been avoided. For local authorities, it means ever growing demand – demand which is pushing councils across Scotland beyond the point where they can cope. And for wider public services, it means the knock-on effects of homelessness on the health system, on criminal justice and beyond continue to echo – tying up resources and making the jobs of hard working professionals even harder.”

The new Housing (Scotland) Bill, first introduced to the Scottish Parliament in March this year, includes measures to prevent homelessness, including an ‘ask and act’ duty on social landlords and bodies, such as health boards and the police, to ask about a person’s housing situation and act to avoid them becoming homeless wherever possible. On the new bill, Downie said that for people to get help before they reach a point of crisis, the new ‘ask and act’ duty must be embedded into practice.

He stated: “Laws are important – but practical and cultural change are just as vital in ensuring that people benefit from earlier and more holistic help to avoid entering a traumatic and increasingly costly homelessness system.”

He said ministers will need to provide more detail on how these plans will operate.

He added: “as changes are embedded, they will require staff operating outside of housing-related roles to take on new responsibilities – and it is vital they understand them.”

Lancashire A ‘Homeless Hot Spot’

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Most parts of Lancashire have a higher proportion of households at risk of becoming homeless than elsewhere in the North West of England, reports the BBC.

Statistics show nine of the county’s 14 council areas exceed the regional average, with Blackpool being in the top 10 places in England for both the rate of households in danger of becoming homeless and the proportion that actually are. The resort town has the 10th-highest rate of actual homelessness in England and the highest in Lancashire. Rossendale has the greatest percentage of households threatened with homelessness in Lancashire and seventh place in England, just above Blackpool.

Statutory homelessness does not necessarily equate to rough sleeping and many households classed as homeless will be living in temporary accommodation, staying with family or “sofa surfing” at a friend’s home. According to the latest statutory homelessness figures released for January to March this year, Rossendale, Blackpool, Pendle, Burnley, Blackburn with Darwen, Preston, Wyre, Hyndburn and Lancaster all have a higher rate of households under threat of homelessness than the North West average. The county fares better on the measure of statutory homelessness, with five areas having a greater proportion of households considered homeless than the regional norm – Blackpool, Burnley, Blackburn with Darwen, Preston and Lancaster.

The figures, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, are based on the number of households per 1,000 in a given area that are owed a so-called “duty of prevention” by local authorities because they are threatened with homelessness, and the same ratio that are regarded as actually being homeless and so are entitled to a “duty of relief”. Ribble Valley came out as the best area in Lancashire by both measures, with Chorley, Fylde and West Lancashire being below the North West average in both categories.

The Labour government has promised to prioritise the issue of homelessness.

Deputy prime minister and housing secretary, Angela Rayner, previously said work was under way “to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place”. She added: “This includes delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable homebuilding in a generation, abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions and a multi-million pound package to provide homes for families most at risk of homelessness.”

How Universities Can Play A Vital Role In Solving Homelessness

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The presence of a university pushes up housing costs for local people on low incomes. But higher education institutions can play more of a role to building structural solutions to homelessness, writes Centre for Homelessness Impact’s Greg Hurst for the Big Issue.

Traditional student life has a romantic quality that can capture the zeitgeist of an age. In the late 19th century, Puccini’s opera La Boheme portrayed students starving in a garret, suffering for truth and art. In the 1950s, Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim satirised the stifling conformity of provincial university campus life with its austere lodgings or ‘digs’.  By the 1980s the television show The Young Ones cast Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson as tenants in an anarchic but more egalitarian student house.

How might composers, novelists or scriptwriters convey students’ living conditions today? An undergraduate queuing at a lettings agency to view an over-priced student house with mould and potentially dangerous electric wiring? A student bedding down on a course-mate’s sofa because he has nowhere else to sleep? Excess demand for student housing in university cities and towns has coincided with a contraction in the supply of private rented accommodation, leaving many students struggling. We should be clear that university students are significantly less – not more – likely to experience homelessness than young people of similar age in the general population. Nevertheless the scarcity, poor quality and cost of student housing should concern university leaders when they face pressure to widen participation in higher education.

There is, however, a wider, deeper and more radical role that universities could play in relieving and preventing homelessness beyond their student bodies in their communities. The core argument for why universities should engage in ending homelessness is this: university cities and larger towns have higher homelessness, both in absolute numbers and per head of the population. The presence of a university in a place shapes the local housing economy, creating higher demand for low-cost rented housing pushing up rents and house prices and making these less affordable for people on low incomes.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) analyses data from its census by dividing areas in England and Wales into 15 groups, one of which is university towns and cities. We can break down their rates of homelessness by looking at their rates per head of their population of applications for homelessness support, rough sleeping and households placed in temporary accommodation to avoid homelessness. We can then compare these on a per-head basis with a similar number of towns of roughly the same size without a university.

The number of households living in temporary accommodation is more than three times as high in university towns per head compared to non-university towns (8.62 versus 2.70 per 1,000). Similarly, rates of rough sleeping are three times higher (17.45 versus 5.8 per 100,000). The exception is for people assessed as at risk of homelessness, which is slightly lower in university towns (5.90 versus 7 per 1,000). But for assessments of people experiencing homelessness, the rate is again clearly higher than in non-university towns (9.01 versus 6.71 per 1,000).

Why? University towns and cities have younger populations (median age 32). And they have more rental accommodation for students and early career academics and less owner-occupied housing. This pushes up housing costs for local people on low incomes. There are practical steps that universities can take to tackle homelessness in their communities. As employers they can offer work to people with current or recent experience of homelessness; not solely unskilled or entry-level jobs but roles with development opportunities. They can encourage volunteering among their staff and students in evidence-based ways to prevent homelessness among at-risk groups, rather than offering short-term relief.

There is a further unique role that universities can play, in their role as educators. Homelessness seems to generate more misconceptions and false narratives than almost any other area of social policy. Platitudes such as ‘homelessness can happen to anyone’ and ‘we are all two pay cheques away from homelessness’ are untrue and are profoundly unhelpful, even if well-meant. Universities are well placed to nullify these false narratives by embedding evidence-based teaching in curriculum areas that are relevant to homelessness. Degrees whose graduates may encounter homelessness include housing studies, social work, medicine, dentistry, nursing, law, architecture, education, theology, criminology and sociology. Lecturers should take care that their references to homelessness are grounded in good evidence and data, that they avoid pejorative language and that course materials including slides and website pages do not stigmatise individuals or reinforce stereotypes.

Much public money is spent on homelessness services that have not been subject to robust independent evaluation. Some university academics and departments conduct excellent research to identify and quantify potential solutions to homelessness but they are too few and too small in scale. More robust quantitative research is needed into what works to prevent and relieve homelessness. Yes, universities should act on student homelessness. But they can build structural solutions to homelessness, too.