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A case of short-term thinking?

Providers of short-term accommodation are nervous about the new supported housing settlement. Sophie Barnes visits a hostel in London to find out more.  Photography by Simon Brandon

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Euston, London. On a smart row of Georgian terraced houses, a street away from one of London’s busiest railway stations and in an area where properties are sold for more than £1m, a group of homeless people are plastering a wall. One of the men in the workshop struggles to get a smooth effect on the wall he is practising on, and a female resident steps in to show him how.

The residents are clearly absorbed in their work and John, who leads the construction training, says it has helped to pull many out of addiction.


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This is Endsleigh Gardens, home to a St Mungo’s hostel where people who have recently been homeless can sleep in one of 48 beds, as well as learning skills such as bricklaying and plastering. It is one of hundreds of similar refuges up and down the country that are sweating over their future, following the announcement of plans for a new method of funding supported housing.

Last month, much of the sector celebrated the news that plans to cap benefit in the social housing sector at Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates would be dropped. But managers of schemes such as this were left concerned.

Lack of understanding

Under new proposals, from 2020, short-term accommodation – which covers hostels, women’s refuges and other vital forms of emergency accommodation – will be funded by local authorities through ringfenced budgets. Women’s Aid has warned that the system would “dismantle” its network of refuges, while others including St Mungo’s and the YMCA have raised serious concerns that funding could be eroded once it is passed to local authorities.

Inside Housing is visiting Endsleigh Gardens to find out more about the type of supported housing that could be under threat from the new funding proposal.

Will Williams, service manager at the hostel, is sceptical about the government’s understanding of the service short-term supported housing provides. The proposal includes a maximum stay in short-term accommodation of two years.

“Where does that two-year figure come from? Does it come from some sort of research that talks about people who have recovered within 24 months?” he asks.

“That’s not a needs-driven number. We’ve got a client who’s been here for five years. She was excluded from various hostels because of her behaviour, she has a personality disorder, she’s got long-standing addiction issues and we’ve managed to contain her here for more than five years; all the commissioners knew her name because she was so used to being kicked out of services. That is not a lady who can do 24 months in supported housing and then move to independent living.

“We’re in a situation where demand is rising and the pot of funding is staying the same.”

“A hostel like this has got people with serious, complex needs; those people aren’t going to live in semi-independent housing in 24 months. The government hasn’t got a clue about their needs.”

Despite the clear need for support beyond just offering a temporary bed, Sylvia Tijmstra, head of policy, campaigns and research at St Mungo’s, points out that spaces in hostels are limited and it is “unclear” how the proposed system to fund short-term accommodation through councils “will give us that security we need to maintain the places we have but also develop the new bed places that are very much needed”.

She says any local grant system administered by councils needs to be “sized appropriately, and uprated, and there’s not enough detail in the current proposals”. She adds: “That’s really disappointing because we’ve been to-ing and fro-ing over this for about two years now so we were hoping to get more detail on how it would work.”

The government’s promise to protect funding through a ringfence has not provided much reassurance for providers that can remember the cautionary tale provided by Supporting People funding, where the ringfence was removed and funding reduced.

“A ringfence can’t really be protected. If you look at the last Budget’s policy costings, it’s clear that annualised spending is just that,” says Ms Tijmstra. “You definitely can’t protect a ringfence beyond this government. We’ve had that experience with Supporting People with the ringfence coming off, so it’s a general expectation in the sector that this ringfence will come off and then it becomes really difficult to protect that funding.”

There is a potential clash between the soon-to-be-introduced responsibilities for councils brought by the Homelessness Reduction Act and the proposed supported housing funding. Councils have already warned that government funding for their new homelessness work will not cover demand and the supported housing fund will place further administrative pressure on councils.

Will Williams stands at the door of Endsleigh Gardens, the north London St Mungo’s hostel he manages
Will Williams stands at the door of Endsleigh Gardens, the north London St Mungo’s hostel he manages

Ms Tijmstra says there is “a question of how much local authorities are going to be able to do to help those who they don’t have a statutory duty to house. Councils will also be expected to draw up strategies including an assessment of the local need for supported housing under the government’s proposal.

Hostels and refuges have already seen significant cuts in the parts of funding that councils control as the government squeeze on local authority funding takes its toll. While the housing element of hostels and refuges is currently funded through housing benefit, the administration work of running the accommodation can be funded through councils.

Need for nuance

Sian Hawkins, campaigns and public affairs manager at Women’s Aid, says the proposal for councils to fund short-term accommodation has to be seen in the context of refuges already closing across the country – Women’s Aid found that over a four-year period one in five refuges had shut down.

“We need a long-term, sustainable funding solution for refuges over a number of years,” says Ms Hawkins. More than three-quarters of women go to refuges in a local authority area away from their own, so the idea of local funding is misleading, Ms Hawkins argues. She says some local authorities see a “disincentive” to fund local refuges because many of the women are not local. “It’s a real postcode lottery and there will be a real lack of central accountability.”

Women’s refuges “require a separate solution”, Ms Hawkins says – something which was also recommended by the Work and Pensions Committee and the Communities and Local Government Committee when they examined the funding issue.

Women’s Aid is also worried the future fund will be based on current demand. More than 50% of women are already turned away from refuges because there are not enough rooms.

Ms Hawkins says: “At the moment we’re in a situation where demand is rising and the pot of funding is staying the same. One in 10 refuges are not funded by a local authority at all – their only form of funding is housing benefit.”

The government has said it is “committed” to keeping the funding ringfenced and the proposed funding rate will “drive up standards of accommodation for vulnerable people”.

There are people out there who support the government’s proposal, however. Jean Templeton, chief executive of youth homelessness charity St Basils, says it is a “really positive step” and there is “significant merit” in an approach that “reduces transactional costs and enables young people to focus on addressing underlying issues and most importantly enables them to progress into education, training or work without detriment to their housing cost support”.

Ms Templeton adds that the current system “creates cost and debt, when the purpose is to provide housing and support which should underpin aspiration and progression”.

But for many providers there is just not enough detail in the government’s proposals to reassure them that future funding will be protected and will match demand. For these organisations, the hope is that the government’s recent about-turn on the LHA cap signals a wider willingness to listen and learn from those on the frontline. That, at least, is what the people who work in this enclave of north London are hoping for.

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