Cards on the table

Our panel:
Chris Holmes, director, Shelter
Clare Tickell, chief executive, Stonham HA
Mike Canham, assistant director of housing, Westminster city council
Shaks Ghosh, chief executive, Crisis
Gerard Lemos, author and consultant
Sue Spaull, policy director, National Housing Federation

The debate was chaired by Housing Today's Matt Weaver, and this article compiled by Ebba Brooks.

Holmes: First we need a stronger duty to all homeless people. We're not saying it will be possible to provide secure council or housing association accommodation or that that will be appropriate. We're saying there is a duty to secure suitable accommodation for anyone who is homeless.

Secondly it is important to integrate the offer of accommodation with the support and care that some people need. Thirdly that we'd like to see much clearer duty to prevent homelessness - whether it's people coming out of institutions, the armed forces or prison or young people coming out of care.

Probably the most difficult area, but crucial, is that people who become homeless should have more choice about where they live. There's a lot of debate about concentrations of homeless people on estates, saying it accentuates social exclusion. But homeless people mostly haven't chosen to live in those unpopular areas. Its the only option that they've had.

Lemos: The difficulties are in the implementation and who this obligation would be placed on. It isn't obvious that preventing homelessness is primarily a housing issue. It's a health issue, it's a social services issue, it's about family breakdown, it's about lots of other things. Are we placing an obligation on the whole local authority, or just the housing department? Why stop there? There's an enormous proportion of ex-offenders amongst single homeless people. Surely there's some obligation on the people who shunted them out on the streets? Similarly the mental health services.

The other difficulty, which Chris rightly acknowledged, is the issue of choice. Homelessness does not work around local authority daries.

HT: Mike, do you think the thing will be workable?

Canham: At the moment there is a feeling that local housing authorities are acting as a safety net to everybody, without any sort of let or hindrance to anybody else taking a responsibility. We believe prevention should start with people who are responsible for many people potentially out on the streets.

Holmes: There must be a duty on other statutory agencies too. There's a parallel with the new community safety plans which do have those requirements and we're seeing results in quite a number of areas.

Ghosh: The problem I have with some of what Gerard is saying is that I think it confuses the issue. I think there are some very simple things you can do to make things better. I think extending the duty to include single homeless people, and doing something about the 24 month rule is really important. I think we need to look at local connections, certainly if the government really wants to meet its rough sleeping targets -

Lemos: By which you mean you wouldn't have to have a local connection to get housed?

Ghosh: I think we need to look at it. Taking Chris's point about appropriate accommodation and support just a little bit further, I'd like to see an automatic right to an assessment -

Lemos: Yes, that's the proposal I want to make.

Ghosh: And I think there is an opportunity here to use Supporting People to assist with how people get their support and care needs met.

HT : But what are you saying about local connection?

Ghosh: How they got around it with community care legislation - and I don't know how it's working in practice - they said social services departments had a duty of care if you were there, but there was an ability to recharge the area you came from.

HT: Is it working?

Canham: My impression is no, not particularly. I don't think you can look at local connection in isolation to the disparity between supply and demand throughout the country. We've got a national piece of homelessness legislation which doesn't fit locally. None of the London boroughs are a typical town like Leicester or Coventry, with a city centre and a hinterland, with a real potential to do mix and match communities.

Tickell: This shouldn't be Londoncentric as a debate either. Thinking about issues of oversupply of housing and creating mixed communities, up in Cumbria there are estates with incredibly high voids because the employment has been ripped out of the heart of those communities -

Lemos: - and because people don't want it. You can't get away from it. It's black and white TVs, that stuff, however cheap you make it, they don't want it.

Tickell: Absolutely.

Holmes: It's crucial we recognise growing differences between a severe shortage in London and the south east, and a greater supply relative to demand in many areas of the north. But even areas with a surplus of housing, we find people who are homeless, in desperate need, being excluded from access.

In many cases in the north there is no reason at all why single people who are homeless shouldn't be offered a tenancy with a registered social landlord or a local authority. In areas like Westminster and others, that wouldn't be feasible, but a much clearer duty to secure suitable accommodation is needed.

HT : How do you couch that legally?

Holmes: The form of words in the 96 act about securing suitable accommodation would be a good starting point.

Lemos: I think the argument for a duty to do a joint assessment is very compelling indeed. There's a strong case for a joined up piece of legislation that creates an obligation to work in a multi agency way to assess the needs of all homeless people, single and families. That should be part of a new platform because homelessness is as much a people problem as it is a housing problem.

It's got to be someone's job to know everything that's going on in a district or neighbourhood and identify the gaps and plan for them. I know that in theory that's what happens now, but I do think we should be arguing for some very specific duties for homeless people.

Tickell: That's essentially what Supporting People is saying.

Lemos: It doesn't seem to me that vis a vis homelessness people are planning services. Housing yes, although the DETR thinks some housing needs assessments are sixth form essays.

Spaull: Ostensibly housing strategy statements are produced, but they are so variable across the country, in terms of how effectively they plan for housing in those areas ... if that's not working in that area, how is it working in a wider area?

Tickell: We're talking about vanguard stuff coming out of what will be the responsibility of the DETR, presumably on the assumption that the other departments will be slow in coming along. Interesting that this is being driven, yet again, from the bricks and mortar side.

Ghosh: What all of us are trying to do is marry two things which don't really sit very comfortably together. One is the housing strategy stuff, which doesn't talk about homelessness, it is about finance, and bricks and mortar, and planning, then you have a parallel universe which is people.

Holmes: I don't think that's right. The lead role for the DETR is appropriate because it's about developing that strategic role of the local authority. Where that's about assessing need and demand that must be done in partnership with statutory and voluntary agencies, bringing in people from the community and volunteers as well. That's a huge challenge but we can see areas where that's beginning to happen and it's those that we build on. Do we all agree on that one?

Lemos: Yes. We might even agree on a bit more, which is that the statutory obligation to do some of this stuff should be with local authorities because people still identify with a sense of place. Will housing associations get dumped on if that happens?

Spaull: What Chris was outlining was a multi agency approach, what would be important would be RSL involvement in that.

HT: A duty to involve RSLs?

Spaull: That's right.

Holmes: I think its crucial that there's an understanding of the huge significance of the Best Value framework over the next few years. The whole stress of the consultation paper is about developing those partnerships. One concern I have is there's a very strong emphasis about consultation with tenants, but not with users of other services, like homeless people, and that opportunity for involvement is at least as important.

Lincolnshire's best value pilot has set up a service planning group including representatives of people who have been homeless, whose views are being asked about the service. That's the sort of model that should be developed.

Lemos: We have rather glided over this choice issue, saying it's rather difficult, and then leaving it alone. The fact is, people get fantastically little choice in social housing system. The way that social housing is allocated is the death rattle of Stalinism. And homeless people get even less choice. If we don't find a way of giving people more choice in this system they will vote with their feet. Unless we create an obligation to give people more choice I really do think we are in the zone of black and white TVs.

Canham: It sounds like a good principle but totally unworkable. Three years ago we took a conscious decision to move to a much greater tenant led allocations policy, which means you do move through as a tenant, but there's no more homes and there's no bigger homes. The reality is that a typical local authority is never going to have sufficient large properties to assist the scheme that you're talking about. Ultimately the answer has to be they look beyond their existing landlord.

Holmes: What is needed is a whole change of mindset isn't it? It has been caricatured in the past, particularly for homeless people, as "you should be grateful you're getting anything". What Gerard called a Stalinist attitude, I think we belong to Krushchev but we're not yet at Gorbachev. Some are beginning to think differently, perhaps to say to people as part of this assessment process, these are the limits, but what are your preferences, where you would most like to live?

Canham: The problem is we've actually further reduced choice. By saying, where would you like to live, can we help you move where you want to, we're actually saying, probably you'll be overcrowded.

Six months ago we calculated we would need an investment of £92m to rehouse the backlog permanently. If we continue to think this is a local authority duty within strict local authority guidelines, it simply won't work.

Holmes: It seems to me there are three strands: in London and the south-east, 40 per cent needs to be affordable housing. The second strand is the legal framework, the statutory duty; and the third is the good practice, the partnerships. All three need to be done together.

Canham: I'd love to have some difficult to let estate that I could bring on stream, but it doesn't exist in Westminster.

Lemos: Mike's problem that you can't build your way out of this problem is absolutely crucial. Even if you could build lots of houses in Westminster or Lambeth, the schools couldn't handle it, the health service couldn't handle it. Without other services in place we simply wouldn't be doing them that many favours and it would lead to a breakdown in tenancy and so forth. This is dangerous ground because what we're getting into is saying the solution to the queue isn't there, that's the bottom line.

Holmes: There isn't a solution within existing constraints and policies.

HT: So can we each say what changes we want to draft?

Canham: Not to change the 24 month rule. I don't think it stops you making long term provision and I think most people want to keep the two year duty in place as an immediate duty.

It doesn't stop us offering virtually all of our social rented housing to people who come through the statutory homelessness route. It is a very clear manifesto commitment and must be implemented.

It is bad enough that homeless families spend two years in temporary accommodation with the insecurity and the stress that creates. To have to live for those two years without knowing that you will get a long-term permanent home is quite unacceptable. It is crucial that there is that confidence that even if you're in temporary accommodation that you will secure a long term permanent home.

Tickell: It's going to be a 5-1 this one.

Canham: I knew it was when I looked at the list of who was coming. On a positive note, if you are responsible for someone losing their current home, then there's got to be a statutory push to make you a bit responsible.

Ghosh: I have a problem with that. Are they then going to become housing authorities as well? They're doing their own job badly enough as it is, if you look at what's happening in the care system for example.

Lemos: There should be a statutory duty to conduct a multi agency joint assessment for all homeless people. (All agree)

I think every local authority should have a duty to produce a service plan every year for dealing with homelessness, not just housing departments, the whole local authority.

HT: We've got five one agreement on the 24 month limit. And the multi agency idea?

All: Yes

HT: A duty to prevent homelessness?

Canham: Yes, depending on the definition of duty.

HT: Extending definition of homelessness to single homeless people?

All: Yes.

Lemos: We mustn't lose Chris's original thing, which we touched on and never came back to. We're not saying this is a duty to provide a council house. We are staying with the 1996 idea of finding suitable accommodation. I know that doesn't wholly deal with your problem Mike, but none of us are saying you've got to find a council house or even a housing association house for every rough sleeper.

We're talking about planning and organising the services around getting a person to a point where they can sustain a home and a life in that home. 6:0 agreement on that.