The numbers sound daunting until you remember just how much has been magicked into existence for other more politically expedient concerns over the past three months, from the furlough scheme to the £20bn in tax cuts for small and medium-sized businesses.Īlthough the government has announced a new rough sleeping taskforce, it has not said whether funding will be provided for this beyond the £3.2bn given to local authorities to cope with the fallout of the pandemic and the £3.2m rough sleeping emergency fund. Why are some of the most vulnerable citizens about to be deposited back on to the streets during a pandemic, to fend for themselves as best they can?Īccording to Crisis, it would cost around £282m to permanently rehouse and support people housed in the current emergency hotels and hostels for the next 12 months. With one study finding the R rate is now above 1 in north-west England, there seems even less justification infor ending the scheme in these places. Coronavirus is still out there, and there’s no sign of a vaccine coming soon. But that money was never specifically earmarked for alleviating homelessness and, with many councils still reeling from the effects of austerity and swingeing cuts, it’s uncertain how much of this pot will be spent on helping homeless people.Īnd at the same time that the government has shifted responsibility for helping homeless people back on to local councils, it hasn’t explained what has changed that would mean rough sleepers are no longer at risk from the virus. Officially, the government has admitted to no such thing, instead pointing to the £3.2bn of funding already given to local authorities to deal with further fallout from the pandemic. But obvious questions remained, not least how long this was all really going to last.Īn answer finally arrived on 4 June, when the BBC, following an earlier exclusive by the Manchester Evening News, reported that contracts between local councils and hotels were due to end at the beginning of July when central government funding to support the scheme formally ran dry. The extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic had led to decisive action on homelessness that would have been almost impossible to envisage just weeks earlier. These are the sort of things that can be almost impossible to coordinate when trying to navigate life on the streets. For some, the scheme also offered access to services that set up shop in the same hotels, such as help with benefits applications and medical prescriptions. One woman told the BBC that “it was like something out of a storybook”. Indeed, the Office for Statistics Regulation has noted the government’s refusal to publish the numbers behind ministers’ claims.įor many formerly homeless people, the sudden transition from instability to comfortable shelter in hotels and hostels after weeks, months or even years on the street must have felt surreal. The communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, sounded a triumphant note when he claimed that more than 90% of the country’s rough sleepers had been housed in accommodation during the coronavirus crisis, even if critics have since highlighted the government’s lack of transparency over the figures. After years of prevarication and official apathy towards homelessness, the move, as Crisis put it, was “extraordinary”.
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