Sadly, this petition has reached the extent of its usefulness. For this reason, I am closing the petition.
Rationale
At the heart of this petition is the recognition that street homelessness threatens health and shortens lives. This has been known and documented for years. The Homelessness Minister, Luke Hall MP, explicitly referred to the life-saving capacities of safe housing. In designing the Government’s lockdown response for rough sleepers, on 27 March he wrote of aiming ‘ultimately on preventing deaths’. On 24 June, he wrote that ending homelessness was not only his job, but his ‘moral mission’.
Developments over the summer
Westminster made high profile announcements around funding decisions targeted for ending rough sleeping. Much of the money Westminster announced for ending rough sleeping was pre-committed money (albeit brought forward). Although some of the money committed for supporting rough sleepers is indeed new, and this deserves praise, before lockdown restrictions started to be lifted there was very significant regional variation in efforts to tackle homelessness. For example, Wales’s Government ring-fenced three times the amount for rough sleepers in Wales than Westminster did for rough sleepers in England. This is despite England having 18 times Wales’s population.
The latest change
On 18 July, Mr Hall issued updated guidance to local authorities to do with supporting rough sleepers. In a nutshell:
1. The lockdown arrangements for rough sleepers are a ‘golden exception’: new and future rough sleepers will not receive access to the support which was so successful in lockdown. For about 60% of people who were given temporary accommodation during lockdown, there are no guarantees, but there is extended and funded support for them, if they can get their relevant local authorities to make use of the funding available.
2. But for about 40% of people temporarily accommodated in lockdown, the Government has made it explicit. With a limited exception for some EU citizens until December 2020, their options are to accept leaving the country, or to find employment. How anyone is supposed to find a job when they can't have a shower, don't eat regularly, haven’t got stable access to medical care etc. is not addressed, and accepting being repatriated/deported doesn't reflect the lives and relationships people have built in the UK, nor their contributions to our society.
3. The Government has indicated more interest than before in a pilot called Housing First. This is the fantastic programme which has more or less eliminated homelessness in Finland, and in pilots elsewere. This bodes well for the future. However, in terms of who will be eligible for this scheme, the Government presently shows no interest to learn from services' experience in lockdown (i.e. the Government does not want universal access to the life-saving Housing First scheme). The confusions and indignities of gate-keeping policies will persist, e.g. people being denied help off the street for lack of ‘priority need’ and due to being ‘intentionally homeless.’
The limit of this petition’s usefulness
Given that the heart of the petition was aimed at building on the fantastic progress made at the start of lockdown, but that the Government in the main has set out a vision of 'more of the same', I don't think it's a wise use of time to pursue more signatures for this petition. To be clear, additional funding of services for street homeless people is needed and welcome. But funding needs to go hand in hand with recognised, effective and evidenced ways of ending homelessness, not an extension of the ‘old ways’.
Clearly, there is work ahead to meet the needs of homeless people, but the Government has chosen not to take vivid and present opportunities to reform the system. It is sad to reflect that the focus on ‘preventing deaths’ has softened. Local to where I live there are memorial services for people whose lives ended while they were living on the street. I will invite Mr Hall to attend one of these services.
Thank you
Thank you to all of you for supporting this petition. 14 000 people have signed, of whom 95% have been people who gave a UK postcode. Thanks to your efforts, 106 charities and collectives lent their support to this petition in different ways. 12 MPs and two peers in the House of Lords were sufficiently interested in this petition to write in in support, too. Collectively, we have added to the pressure for positive change: that is reason to be hopeful. The sadness, of course, is that change will be too late for some.