Getting People Off The Streets Is The Easy Bit – Keeping Them In Their Accommodation Is Much Harder
Earlier this week the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, promised more than £420 million to deal with the problem of street homelessness nationally by Christmas. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister thinks this is a problem and the fact that he is putting new money into the Liverpool City region with £12 million for local use. My first ‘job’ within the council 51 years ago was to chair a newly formed homelessness committee and I think his plans are doomed to failure unless he thinks through the issues differently.
As the Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson in Liverpool, I have challenged Liverpool regional Mayor Steve Rotherham to use money allocated to the region by the Prime Minister to create a new hub for the homeless in central Liverpool. Unless a hub is created then a revolving door between street and accommodation and back onto the streets will simply go faster and will not solve the problem. I believe that unless there is an innovative approach to dealing with street homelessness then this money will be wasted, as has much of the money tried to deal with this problem over the decades.
Coincidentally, on the same day that the Prime Minister made his announcements, I was on the streets with staff from a number of projects and meeting the homeless people themselves. In my letter I said, “Many of the people I spoke to yesterday had accommodation available which for a variety of reasons they would not or could not use. Alternatively, many had been evicted from accommodation because of their poor behaviour relating to their complex mental problems.
When I asked the experts, “what is the biggest thing that we could do to help the street homeless and people who have been on the streets?” the reply was unanimous – provide a hub for the homeless somewhere which is accessible so that they have a safe place to go and be supported. When I visited Leeds Street yesterday there were already 20 homeless people sitting on the fence, talking to each other, and supporting each other because they had nowhere else to go. I understand that, given it was a good day yesterday, there would be more than 60 people congregated there in the afternoon. I later visited Wilde Street where, as I arrived, the police started moving homeless people on when realistically there was nowhere for them to go.
Creating a new hub within the city centre would take homeless people off the streets during the day but would have a much greater effect than that on the individuals themselves. They would be able to get a bath or shower, have some decent food inside them, be assessed for their drugs and other health problems, and provide mutual support in a safe environment where people did not judge them. Such a hub which could provide on-going support would make it more likely that people would stay in the accommodation provided and make it more likely that they would be able to take up offers of accommodation in the first place.
To deal with this problem overall we need to understand the reasons why people become homeless in the first place. There appear to be two reasons for homelessness although in reality these break into a number of subheadings. The first area are people who are temporarily down on their luck. They may have had a relationship breakdown or become unemployed, and these are people who can often be dealt with very quickly and steered into new permanent accommodation. Although I give a warning here that if they are not helped effectively and quickly with their problems and their accommodation, they can themselves quite rapidly become street homeless. The next category is much harder to deal with. There is a cadre of people who have had the odds stacked against them since birth, often born into difficult family circumstances and where they picked up problems with criminality and drug use at a very early stage. This leaves them with difficult health problems both mentally and physically.
One person I spoke to had been in council care at a very early age and had struggled to cope with the circumstances of her birth. She had tried hard to help herself and come off drugs and then gone off on them again; had moved in to accommodation and then being forced to leave it. Just providing her with a new place to stay will not help deal with her long-term problems. Another person had accommodation, but she had been sleeping rough a few nights because the accommodation wasn’t safe and they had experience of being physically and sexually abused.
The reason that everyone wanted a hub is that it would enable support from a variety of disciplines, but particularly from the council’s social work department, the NHS, and housing associations to see the whole person and their problems and not just the immediate problem of homelessness. The people I met were congregating together on the streets because there was literally nowhere else that they can go during the day. They came together for mutual support and assistance and for the friendliness and supportive person that we all need in our lives. It also meant that the professionals who spend their life helping them also knew where to find them.
I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the people who are dealing with the street homeless that I met yesterday. For a variety of reasons people on the streets can be difficult to deal with and unpredictable in terms of trying to create a relationship with them. Most of the people that I met yesterday had a long-term commitment to their work and a huge desire to help these most needy people. Their sympathy and empathy with the people that they’re helping was an example to us all of good behaviour and the expression of social concern.
Now in his 42nd year as a Liverpool councillor Richard Kemp was the Lord Mayor (2024-2025). He chairs LAMIT the Local Authority Mutual Investment Trust. He also chairs QS Impact a global charity that works in partnership to help your people deliver the UN’s SDGs.
