Streets ahead

Clientele

Numbers of itinerant workers and transient men using hostels are declining; in their place will increasingly be more young people, drug users, the mentally ill and those from black and minority-ethnic groups. Clients will also continue to have rising expectations of hostels.

Other hostel dwellers

Specialisation is allowing hostels to offer more tailored services and care. Clients of the future are much more likely to be sharing the hostel with people similar to them, determined either by gender, age, specific mental or substance-abuse problem, support requirements or ethnic background. Alternatively, residents might be staying in a new, small, short-stay “assessment centre” to establish the basis of their needs before transfer to a specialist facility.

Help and support

An increasing number of hostels hire or retain specialist drugs, alcohol and mental health workers. And more regular staff will be trained on these issues and dealing with aggressive or chaotic clients.

Administration and funding

The hostel of the future may well be operated by a consortium of existing charities. Public funding is likely to come from the NHS, the Department for Education and Skills, the Learning and Skills Council and other statutory agencies. It will be more closely tied to performance targets. Philanthropic funding will remain vital.

Age

The hostel will most often be newly built as the old, obsolete hostels are replaced.

Location

Central London has an overwhelming concentration of homeless hostels. There is little provision in the suburbs.

This situation is unlikely to change.

The way out

A lack of move-on accommodation is clogging up hostels, a problem that is likely to endure. A growing number of schemes aim to counter this, including Brent council’s and Novas Group’s “Save as You Stay” scheme, where clients put aside money in accounts that are ring-fenced for paying a deposit on their own place.

Rules

Tenants will have a licence agreement setting out their rights; in some cases, they may also be expected to sign acceptable behaviour contracts. Clients are no longer expected to leave the hostel during the day. In the future, more hostels may allow alcohol on the premises; at present 52% do, up from 15% in 1990.

Activities and education

In the past, hostels saw their role as restricted to offering shelter for the night and perhaps a hot meal. That is now changing as more and more units offer education, vocational training and life-skills training.

Self-catering units are the most obvious and basic example, but other activities might involve sports, music and drama. Registered social landlord Look Ahead Housing and Care is leading the way with a photography programme; the charity St Mungo’s offers carpentry lessons and Novas Group does work-experience placements.

Self-contained flats

Many hostels now contain clusters of self-contained flats as well as single bedrooms. Others are likely to follow suit because this helps residents prepare for a return to normal life.

Single bedrooms

The room has only one bed; shared rooms are likely to almost disappear. Most hostels will contain between 30 and 60 beds, making them much smaller than the huge pre-war hostels that catered for large populations of transient workers.

Pets

Many homeless people keep dogs for companionship, but until recently not a lot of hostels permitted them to join their owners. This is changing and will continue to do so; at present 25% permit dogs.

Decor

The room will not be lavish, of course, but the decor will be smart because clients expect this and it is important for self-esteem and good relations with the staff.

A small kitchen

In 2003, 58% of hostels offered self-catering facilities and that percentage seems set to rise steadily.

Staff

There will be 24-hour on-site staff cover. Clients will have more interaction with staff and plenty of routes for feedback. English Churches Housing Group already sends out weekly questionnaires, and the Novas Group has client representatives on its board and “service user councils”.

Read the report, London’s Hostels for Homeless People in the Twenty-first Century, at www.centrepoint.org.uk