Homelessness — House of Commons, 2016-12-14
Topic: Housing
Robert John Blackman (Conservative, Centre-right): Clearly we have the problem that Governments of all persuasions, as the Minister rightly said, have failed to build enough housing for almost 40 years. The reality is that the private sector alone will never build enough housing. We have had the announcement of the settlement for London, with £3.15 billion to build 90,000 affordable homes across London over the next three years. That is a great settlement. It is now incumbent on everyone to get on with building those properties. Public land is available on which they can be built, and it can We have to divide homelessness into two categories. There are rough sleepers—people who are on the street and who are at severe risk. Their health is bad and they are likely to be attacked. Many of them are on the streets for the first time and are extremely vulnerable. As I said in an intervention, it is likely that they will die as a result of sleeping rough. That is an absolute scandal in this day and age. They cost the health service huge amounts of money. They are likely to be addicted to drugs, alcohol or tobacco. We cannot blame them for that, because they are in a spiral of despair. We have to come together as a House to make sure that no one gets to the stage of sleeping rough There is also the problem of the hidden homeless—the sofa surfers. These are people who stay with family and friends until they exhaust all their family and friends and end up on the streets. Unless we address that issue, we will not solve the problem Last night, I went out with a brilliant team from St Mungo’s to identify people on the streets of the city of London who are sleeping rough. It is clear that those individuals have complex needs. It is not a magic solution to say, "Give them somewhere to live or sleep and that is the end of the problem." They need counselling and support. They need a whole package of measures to help them get back on their feet and live what we would all call a normal life. Unfortunately, providing accommodation is not sufficient. That is an important point Equally, it is clear that one problem in society now is that private sector landlords are reluctant to rent homes to people who are homeless. I therefore ask the Government to consider a national deposit scheme, so that people who are in need of housing in the private sector can be provided with a deposit at a national level, rather than relying on local authorities to identify a deposit for them. That would secure private rented accommodation for people who are not in priority need. That would make a huge difference to the number of people who are declared homeless but are not assisted. We know that one of the challenges for people who are in difficulty is finding the deposit to buy a house or for private rented housing. That is something that the Government should consider I look forward to the publication of the White Paper on the development of new homes and the housing strategy. We all have to be clear that housing is a market. If we start interfering in a market, there are unintended consequences. I trust that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench have considered all those aspects and, rather than tinkering with some of the measures, will get on with a national house building programme that we can all be proud of and with measures that will alleviate the homelessness crisis. I look forward to the other announcements that will no doubt follow. Measures to reduce rough sleeping are paramount. If we do not address that problem quickly, we will lose too many people too early.