Charities to demand more move-on accommodation for ex-rough sleepers

Four of the biggest homelessness charities met on Monday to draw up their list of concerns, which will be submitted to the ODPM select committee inquiry by next Friday.

Homeless Link, Shelter, Centrepoint and Crisis highlighted the lack of move-on accommodation for rough sleepers – supported housing that would allow them to leave hostels – as a major concern.

The Greater London Authority reported in April last year that 30% of people living in hostels were ready to move on but there was nowhere for them to go.

The charities will also ask the committee to investigate councils that have declared people intentionally homeless so that they did not have to be a priority for housing.

Shelter said temporary accommodation was being heavily relied on in the wake of the Homelessness Act, which said families with children must not be placed in bed-and-breakfasts for more than six weeks.

ODPM figures said the number of families placed in private temporary accommodation almost doubled between 2001 (before the act came into force) and the start of 2004, rising from 25,740 to more than 50,000.

The law on temporary accommodation applying to families should apply to 16- and 17-year-olds

Centrepoint

A Shelter spokesman said: “Temporary accommodation is expensive, stops people from settling down and keeps people in the poverty trap. We’d like to look at tackling this.”

A spokesman for Centrepoint added that 16- and 17-year-olds, who are a priority for rehousing under the new law, were being placed in B&Bs instead of families with children. He said: “The law applying to families should apply to 16- and 17-year-olds.”

In the submission to the inquiry, the charity will also raise last week’s Supporting People funding cutbacks, which it said would stop the development of new services.

Jenny Edwards, chief executive of Homeless Link, the umbrella body for front-line homelessness organisations, also called for priority-need categories to be widened.

She said: “The are a wider number of categories in Scotland and Wales and that’s a direction we [in England] should look at.”