Last month we published our latest Annual Review of support for single homelessness services. This longitudinal research has been running since 2008, tracking the sector’s shape, size and challenges, and the circumstances of people accessing homelessness support. Sophie Boobis, our Head of Policy and Research, unpacks key findings from this year’s report, and explains why the evidence is so important to our government influencing work.
Services up and down the country are reporting increased demand, reduced capacity across the system, and increasingly that they are shrinking or shutting down altogether. We don’t always have the national data to illustrate the true scale of change across the sector, but because this research series has been running for 16 years, we can look back and see the big picture of transformation over this period, in a way that can sometimes be hard to do when we’re looking year on year.
Changing shape of the sector: reduced capacity, increased demand
This year’s report shows there are 907 accommodation projects across England, and that since 2008 the sector has shrunk by 48%, with a 45% decrease in bedspaces available. At the other end of the pathway, there are 168 day centres, a 10% decrease since 2008. This is during a time when rough sleeping has increased by 120%, and all forms of homelessness are rapidly rising.
Meanwhile, a lack of affordable housing is increasingly trapping people within the system: 29% of services reported accommodating people who were ready to move on to secure, sustainable housing, of which 54% of people had been waiting six months or longer.
With resources so constrained, it is no wonder that services are at capacity and unable to meet demand: 67% of accommodation providers reported having to turn someone away because their project was too full.
Who is accessing support: the role of the wider system
As we’ve seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, the people accessing support continue to present with increasingly high levels of complex needs. Over 95% of people accessing accommodation and day centres reported mental health support needs, with high levels of substance misuse support, physical ill health, and learning difficulties also reported. Despite the level of need services are supporting, accessing the wider health and social care system remains challenging. Over 90% reported difficulties in accessing mental health services, nearly two-thirds had difficulties accessing physical health services, and over half reported difficulties accessing drug and alcohol services.
Lack of inclusion health provision, dedicated pathways, and pressure on wider health and social services all impact on the ability of people experiencing homelessness to access the support they so desperately need. This puts pressure on homelessness services, which are not set-up to manage such high complexity and need and are already dealing with increased demand and constrained resources. For this reason, it is important to engage with the NHS 10 year plan consultation and push for desperately needed change to the wider system. You can read about Homeless Link’s submission here.
The Annual Review also saw an increase in two different populations accessing services. Perhaps unsurprisingly, accommodation providers and day centres report 60% and 67% increases in refugees. Given Home Office changes to the cessation of asylum support during this research period, this is a stark reminder that it is vital we ensure the asylum system recognises its role in driving homelessness and that the Home Office is central within the inter-ministerial taskforce, so that homelessness is no longer a default outcome of the immigration system. In this context we welcome the recent change from 28 days to 56 days before people granted refugee status lose their asylum support. We will use next year’s Annual Review research to track the impact this has had.
The second demographic that increased notably was people experiencing homelessness for the first time (reported by 43% of accommodation providers and 83% of day centres). With day centres so close to the immediate fallout from people becoming homeless, they are often the first to pick up on emerging trends. This speaks to the ongoing pressures of high bills, high inflation, low wages, high housing costs and insufficient welfare benefits, again demonstrating how important it is that the new Government strategy focuses on prevention and recognises the need to involve wider government departments including DWP and Treasury.
Funding pressures
The backdrop of this situation is a complex, fragmented funding environment. The Annual Review series was originally set up to track the impact of removing the Supporting People ringfence and looking at the data we can see just how radically that changed the funding model. Since 2008, there has been a 1700% increase in Housing Benefit as the main funding source for homelessness accommodation providers, with 82% of providers receiving Housing Benefit as part of their overall income. At the same time there has been a 71% decrease in local authority commissioned contracts.
This had consequences on the types of services being provided and ultimately, due to the infiltration of rogue providers taking advantage of the model, led to the introduction of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act, for which we expect to see the consultation shortly.
But it has also had longer term implications leading to a piecemeal approach to funding, focussed on short-termism and crisis interventions and often detached from strategy. Coming into the spring Spending Review and the strategy refresh we are working hard to highlight the challenges facing organisations across England, and how looking at the significant funding structure changes, alongside the changing size of homelessness provision is critical to a much-needed reset approach to preventing and ending homelessness. Findings from the Annual Review series have informed our recent funding policy report and budget submissions, and formed a key part of our joint campaign with Inside Housing.
While the picture may seem bleak, it is important to recognise the positives! The full report unpacks regional trends and shows clear examples of local areas working to reverse negative trends, increase capacity and provide the support needed by people experiencing homelessness. The research also highlights the diversity of support provided, the innovation and creativity within the system, and the resilience of a sector facing ever changing conditions.
