We face a homelessness emergency in this country, and so today’s Budget announcement of an additional £233m for local authorities to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness is welcome.
However, this important short-term funding boost needs to be accompanied by a long-term commitment to address the emergency and its root causes.
This should include the safeguarding of important funds which are set to expire by April 2025, such as the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) and Rough Sleeping Accommodation Programme (RSAP), as we called for in a joint letter to the Chancellor alongside 75 other charities.
It also needs to include the launch and swift progress of the promised cross-government task force on ending homelessness.
We know that building more social and affordable housing is key to addressing the homelessness emergency. As Phil, who lives at our Emmaus community in Hull, recently said: “The government has to make sure everyone has some sort of affordable housing, otherwise street homelessness is going to go up even more, and people will suffer.”
We welcome the additional £500m funding for affordable housing, reforms to Right to Buy, and longer-term social housing rent settlements, that together will grow the stock of social housing.
But with housing and homelessness organisations, including Emmaus UK, calling for 90,000 social homes to be built each year, much more needs to be done.
Today’s Budget will be followed by the publishing of the government’s Housing Strategy and the Spending Review next year, where we expect to see a higher level of ambition for ending homelessness and creating more affordable and social housing.