Budget Statement — House of Lords, 2015-07-21
Topic: Housing
Francis Hare (Crossbench, Unknown): Well, compared to us, I suppose. Perhaps I should not pursue that. Germany and France may be better examples in comparison with the United States. One would think that the United States, with its many advantages in many ways, would outstrip those two by far but, in terms of family households with an absent parent, Germany has a level of 15% and France has 17%, while the US has 26% or 27%. There may be some interesting inquiries to be made there The second request that I make of the Minister is to look at the long-term cost of family homelessness that I have just described. A recent, important report on the cost of failing to meet the perinatal mental health needs of mothers identified a long-term cost of £8 billion a year of failing to meet those needs. So it is possible to project such costs into the future. It would be helpful in future Budgets to think, for instance, about the treatment of homeless families and to ask what the long-term cost is of failing to address their needs. The Minister might work with the Department for Communities and Local Government and perhaps commission a charity such as the Centre for Social Justice to look at the issue of family homelessness and the long-term cost, and at what the policy options might be to mitigate any harm arising from homelessness There are many challenges to families who are homeless. I commend the Government on continuing the work of the troubled families initiative, so ably led by Louise Casey. However, even its model of forming relationships with such families through a family support worker must be challenged if there is such a high turnover of families moving, with it being hard to intervene effectively I want briefly to quote from what last week’s Economist said about homelessness and the housing crisis: "Without roofs over their heads, certain households can appeal to be put up by their local authority. Families with children, expectant mothers and those escaping domestic violence all have a legal right to emergency accommodation … At the end of March, 64,610 households in England were living in council-provided temporary housing, a quarter more than in 2010" The article goes on to talk about the move to private accommodation: "Private tenancies are precarious … The number of people made homeless following the termination of a rental contract in the private sector trebled between 2009 and 2014; termination of contract is now the main cause of homelessness … Despite relying more on private landlords, councils are leaving thousands of families out in the cold. Fewer than half of all applications for temporary accommodation are accepted. Even those households that meet the sufficient conditions—having young children, being pregnant, and so on—are frequently let down. In the first three months of this year, councils failed to find homes for 6,900 households that had a legal right to emergency shelter. That is 80% more than in 2010" The article goes on to say that this is a growing crisis I welcome much of what the Government have done in the past with the support of the Liberal Democrats and their proposals for the future, but I ask the Minister whether he might look particularly at these concerns around family homelessness and its long-term impact.