Rough sleeping declines across England but charities warn ‘crisis looms’ after Covid

The number of rough sleepers in England fell by more than one third last year, figures show, after the government was forced to temporarily house thousands of homeless people to reduce the risk to them from coronavirus.

A new report by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) estimated there were 2,688 people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2020, down from 1,578 the previous year – a 37 per cent drop.

It marks the third consecutive year these figures have dropped in England, largely aided this time around by the Everyone In scheme, which launched last March.

The £3.2m emergency fund was used to offer every person in the country living on the street a hotel room, or some other form of temporary accommodation, during lockdown. Its aim was to allow displaced people the opportunity to self-isolate securely, and to hopefully reduce the transmission of Covid.

Announcing the “heartening” figures on Thursday, communities secretary Robert Jenrick told MPs some 37,000 people had benefitted from the programme – congratulating his own party as he did so.

“We’ve seen the largest fall in rough sleeping since the annual snapshot began. The number of people sleeping rough has almost halved since this administration took office in 2019,” he said in the Commons.

But the report also showed that the number of people sleeping on the streets at the end of last year was still 52 per cent higher than in 2010 when this data first started being collected.

Local authorities collect ‘annual snapshot’ statistics by selecting a single ‘typical night’ in autumn and using a count-based estimate of visible rough sleeping, an evidence-based estimate after meeting with local agencies, or an evidence-based estimate after a meeting that includes a spotlight count.

Polly Neate, CEO of homeless charity Shelter, told The Independent ministers should be given “credit where credit’s due” for their work – but pointed to the “massive rise” in homelessness that is expected to ensue with the end of lockdown.

“What I’m thinking about isn’t how many rough sleepers there were last October – it’s how much homelessness there is going to be in a few months’ time when we’ve got no furlough, the evictions ban has ended and people are losing their jobs,” she said.

“Frankly there’s a crisis coming, which will only add to the ongoing housing and emergency accommodation crisis in England.”

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She added: “The whole housing system is at breaking point and what we have now is: a crisis which already existed before the pandemic, and has been made worse during it, will now get even worse once it’s over – when people start losing their homes and can’t be placed anywhere.

“You can’t solve homelessness without homes – and homes are what we haven’t got. That’s what the government needs to sort.”

Mr Jenrick also restated a pledge for new social housing made by the MHCLG last year. He told MPs the government’s priority now is to build “6,000 new homes for rough sleepers, backed by over £400m of funding over the course of this parliament”.

When the scheme was first announced, on 24 May last year, 3,300 of the homes were promised to be available “in the next 12 months.”

Hamilton, a 47-year-old who has been on and off the streets for over 25 years, said such a number “didn’t even begin to scratch the surface”.

He was one of the thousands of people in England to be offered emergency housing, which he described as “a nightmare”, during the first wave of Covid-19 back in March.

“I went to Exeter Council to say I’d seen the news and I needed putting up but I was turned away,” he told The Independent. “I had to go to the police who then had to phone that woman and tell her if she didn’t find me somewhere to stay, I could be arrested.”

Hamilton returned to the streets after just four nights, though, because he had been housed with drug users after specifically asking “not to be”.

In separate research, Shelter found “numerous cases” from across the country of people denied help from councils due to a lack of clear guidance from ministers on what provisions rough sleepers are afforded during lockdown. Ms Neate said she could not provide data on the issue, but her team knew it was “something that is happening all over”.

One such example the charity gave was of a man who approached Shelter’s advice team in January 2021 after a local council, in the northeast of England, asked him to leave the accommodation that they had provided him during the pandemic because “they did not believe he was homeless”.

Crisis CEO Jon Sparkes said of the report: “Bringing people off the streets had a life changing impact – it didn’t just provide protection against coronavirus, but gave people an opportunity to engage with vital services, access support and get their health back on track.

“But we must be clear – while positive, these statistics do not represent the full picture. Throughout the pandemic we have seen new people forced onto our streets and every person sleeping rough is one too many.”

Hamilton, who now lives in a shared house in Birmingham, said the Covid crisis might have given rough sleepers “places to live” but it had also left them “in limbo”.

“A 37 per cent drop [in rough sleepers] is fine but it doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “You watch, homeless figures will shoot back up in the next few months when everyone’s kicked out of their temporary accommodation and has no where to go but the streets.”

Hamilton added: “It makes people feel better [to believe homelessness measures are working] but the truth is, if it weren’t for [Covid] everyone would still be on the streets – and there’d probably be more of us than ever.”

Ms Neate, from Shelter, agreed: “The Everyone In scheme was a good solution to the problem at hand (coronavirus) but it was not a solution to homelessness.”