The “Sickening Increase” Of Homelessness In Bristol

The scale of youth homelessness in Bristol is revealed in new figures – with family breakdown the most likely cause.

The latest figures for the most recent quarter – the three months of July, August and September 2017 – show a rise in the number of people being officially accepted as a new homeless person by the city council. During those three months, another 241 people were added to the register of people without a home who the council has a duty to try to help. That figure is more than 80 a month, or around 19 or 20 every week.

And for only the second time since the start of the city’s housing crisis in 2013, the most common reason why people end up on the streets was because their parents, or other relatives, were not ‘willing or able’ to accommodate them. In the three months to the end of September, a total of 80 people were accepted as homeless for that reason, while 65 presented themselves to the city council because they had been evicted from the private-rented sector.

The numbers of people being registered as homeless is currently running around four times higher than in 2012 and 2013. Back then, the numbers of people ending up without a home because of family breakdowns and eviction were around 20 or 30 every quarter. As a barometer of the city’s housing crisis, the number of ‘homeless acceptances’ revealed the scale of the sudden housing crisis.

In the spring of 2014, the number of people left homeless after being evicted jumped to more than three times what it had been two years earlier. Then, in the summer of 2014, the number of people whose families said they could no longer stay at home doubled in the space of three months. The figures kept rocketing. Over the winter of 2014 into 2015, the number of people evicted and ending up homeless doubled in the space of three months, hitting record levels.

Bristol councillor, Paul Smith, said the dramatic rise since 2014 and 2015 coincided with the Government’s welfare reform taking effect, which has driven homelessness as people see their benefits cut or payments stopped. He said the average number of people sleeping on the streets of Bristol in 2011 was just five. In seven years, that had gone up to at least 69.

“This doesn’t seek to count all those on the streets but it shows an alarming rise,” Mr Smith said. “This increase is not a result of demographic change, homelessness suddenly becoming fashionable or even a worsening economy (it has been reported to improve over that time).

“The sickening increase is largely driven by the slashing of welfare benefits, particularly housing benefit and partly from the side-lining of social housing development. If the safety net is slashed to pieces it should be no surprise that more and more people are falling through it,” he added.