Just about nobody believes that only 464 people are sleeping rough in England so it’s good to see that the counting method is to be overhauled.
If anyone needs any more convincing take a look at a report published today by the Red Cross on the estimated 20,000 failed asylum seekers living in destitution in Britain - 28% of those surveyed had slept rough.
Housing minister Grant Shapps was set to announce the move at the first government meeting on homelessness this afternoon but it was one of his top priorities in opposition. In particular he’d identified the practice of doing the count in bands (0-10 and 11-20) and then rounding down, often to zero.
Other problems with counts in the past have included a failure to find rough sleepers, not counting people sleeping in cars and - I’m not sure if this is apocryphal or not - deciding that people who are awake at the time the counters come calling are not sleeping rough.
Shapps is keen on treating rough sleeping as more than just a housing problem. As he put it ahead of today’s meeting: ‘For the first time, ministers from across government are coming together to ensure that the needs of the homeless are being met, not just in terms of housing, but in employment, training, rehabilitation and healthcare.’
So far, so good, and it certainly makes a refreshing change to see a politician setting up a situation that he will almost certainly be blamed for later. As Harry Phibbs puts it on the Conservative Home website: ‘What is the betting that when the true figure for rough sleeping come out we will have Labour press releases saying: “Sharp increase in rough sleeping since the Tories took over….’
And yet the new approach raises some big questions too. Not least the obvious one that rough sleeping may not just be a housing problem but it is still linked to a lack of housing - and funding for affordable homes is about to cut.
Cuts in local government spending and a removal of ringfencing do not bode well either. How many hostels and homelessness projects will face cutbacks or closure over the next few years?
And reform of housing benefit and the wider welfare system will soon be on the way. The main objectives are to cut the overall bill and make work pay but welfare reforms always create losers and well as winners - how many of those will end up homeless?
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