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Morning Briefing: would Housing First solve rough sleeping?
Several stories about rough sleeping dominate this morning’s round-up of the latest housing news in the national media
In the news
The House magazine – which covers the affairs of the Houses of Parliament – writes about the Housing First model, which is used in parts of Scandinavia, Canada and the US to tackle rough sleeping and is being tentatively rolled out in the UK. This is a topic on which Inside Housing has reported widely and campaigned on, and which now enjoys substantial political support.
In other news about rough sleeping, The Press, which reports on York, carries a story about how rough sleepers have been “abused, attacked and urinated on”.
And on the BBC, the sister of a murdered rough sleeper calls on the public to talk to homeless people instead of “giving them abuse”.
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Figures from Rightmove, covered in City AM, show that houses are effectively becoming more affordable as price growth drops to 0.2% and wage inflation rises to 3.4%.
While this will take many years to mean that your average generation renter can get a mortgage near an employment hub, it is a refreshing way of cutting the ‘house price stagnation’ story that is usually presented in the finance pages as bad news.
Bloomberg is also covering Rightmove numbers this morning, noting a small rise in asking prices in London, as sellers “test the market” ahead of Brexit. Ironically enough, this marks a 3.4% rise – wiping out the wage inflation advantage trumpeted by the same firm elsewhere.
Firefighters have told The Guardian of fears they are being “stitched up” by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, which is a core participant in the inquiry, has claimed that the process risks becoming a “whitewash” because ministers’ deregulation of building standards and the roles of companies involved in the tower’s £10m refurbishment will be addressed only when public interest has waned.
You can read our analysis of what we learned from the firefighters’ testimony to the inquiry here.
In local news, Richmondshire Today reports on claims that the council is taking 57 days to complete repairs, Welsh local paper The Leader reports on plans to invest £34m in social housing in Flintshire and London’s Evening Standard carries news of Crystal Palace Football Club’s homelessness shelter.
On social media
More commentary on the homelessness ‘crisis’:
Good people are outraged by the #homelessness crisis. Change will come, writes Labour’s @LiamByrneMP: t.co/tZ7BGctRDq #ukhousing
— Dan Crawford (@dancrawford85)Good people are outraged by the #homelessness crisis. Change will come, writes Labour's @LiamByrneMP: https://t.co/tZ7BGctRDq #ukhousing
— Dan Crawford (@dancrawford85) February 18, 2019
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