Manchester Metro Mayor To End Homelessness “By 2020”

Greater Manchester’s newly elected Mayor, Andy Burnham, is teaming up with national homeless charity Crisis to make homelessness a priority.

Mr. Burnham, who took 63% of the vote for an emphatic win in last week’s election, promised to set up a new “Homelessness Action Network” to initiate a range of community groups toward ending homelessness by 2020. Figures from campaigners suggest as many as 3,292 people are surviving without a home across Greater Manchester, while Manchester itself has the highest figures of homelessness in the North West. It is estimated that 2,000 people are living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.

Jon Sparkes, Chief Executive of Crisis, said: “The number of people forced to sleep rough in Greater Manchester and across the country continues to rise and, for many, the consequences are devastating. But we know there are solutions, and so we welcome the new Mayor of Greater Manchester’s commitment to end rough sleeping across the city region by 2020, and the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Homelessness Fund, which Crisis has been chosen to help set up.”

“For 50 years, we have been helping people leave homelessness behind for good, and we will use all that knowledge and experience to help ensure money donated to the fund is used as effectively as possible to put an end to rough sleeping in Greater Manchester once and for all.”

The Greater Manchester Mayor’s Homelessness Fund will operate as a Community Foundation, an independent charity that will disseminate funds to local organisations through a grant process. In the interim period, while the Community Foundation is being set up, the fund will be available on a GoFundMe facilitated by Crisis and transferred in full to the Mayor’s Homelessness Fund on completion of the process.

Mr. Burnham also wants the Greater Manchester Housing Fund “refocused” on the building of affordable homes. He said: “We will seek to renegotiate the terms of the fund so that it can be used to help councils and housing associations build more council homes and social housing.”

He continued: “We will work with housing providers to establish a new GM-wide Rent-to-Own scheme that will be particularly focused on people under-30 to help them on to the housing ladder. We will focus Rent-to-Own schemes on our town centres to revitalise them.” He also said private landlords will have a voluntary registration scheme to help drive up standards.

It is not yet known whether his counterpart for the Liverpool region, Steve Rotheram, will be taking a similar line to tackle the problem of homelessness.