§ Mr. Alfred Dubs (Battersea)Homelessness is becoming an increasing problem in Tory Britain. At present, there are estimated to be 100,000 homeless families. In London, the problem is more acute. I am especially worried about those homeless people and homeless familites in bed and breakfast accommodation. The estimates are somewhat uncertain, but the generally accepted figure for March of this year was 4,382 people in bed and breakfast accommodation in London. That figure is expected to rise to about 6,000 by March 1987. We all know that those figures are the tip of the iceberg of the homelessness problem in Britain.
In July of this year, a letter was written to The Guardian on behalf of 17 directors of housing in London boroughs, which said that they wished to express
our concern at the rising tide of homelessness sweeping across the city.The letter continued:
Some councils arc having to use accommodation which is neither safe nor reasonable…The amount of public money being wasted on bed-and-breakfast is scandalous…The Government is well aware of the action necessary. Little is being done, and we are no longer prepared to stand by and say nothing.In Wandsworth, 185 families are in bed and breakfast accommodation. There are perhaps a further 70 in the next stage of homeless families accommodation; a few may also be in property provided by a housing association; and some are in short-life property. We all know that whether families are accepted into this accommodation depends on whether the local authority says that they are intentionally or unintentionally homeless. Wandsworth council especially has told many families and individuals threatened with homelessness, or who are homeless, that it will do little for them because it says that the families or individuals are intentionally homeless. People cannot fight against that. That is the position if the council defines it as such.The council sent a letter to me a few weeks ago about a woman with a child who was in bed and breakfast accommodation. The letter said that the woman, who does not want her name mentioned,
has been in our temporary bed and breakfast accommodation since 5th February 1986. She was due to move to Nightingale Square—which is where the second-stage homeless families move—
on 10th September 1986 but unfortunately it was discovered that she had not in fact been using the bed and breakfast accommodation for a period of several weekends which raised the question of whether in fact she was homeless.I discussed this matter with the woman and discovered that she had not been in the bed and breakfast accommodation all the time because the cooking facilities were inadequate for herself and for her baby. So, during the day, she went to a friend's house and used the cooking facilities there. It seems that, for that reason, the council questioned whether the women was homeless. The council went on to say in the letter that the woman
was informed that, were she to stay consistently at the hotel for another four weeks, she would be eligible to move into Nightingale Square.It is almost as though the local authority treats bed and breakfast accommodation as a punishment, and people must serve their time there before they can move to better and more appropriate accommodation. We know that the cost of this accommodation is prohibitively high. It has 1535 been estimated that it costs £14,500 to accommodate a family of four in bed and breakfast accommodation. That is roughly double the cost of keeping the same family in local authority accommodation, if such accommodation was available.Why is there so much homelessness and why is it increasing? There are two reasons. First, there is a sheer lack of adequate property—houses or flats—to rent. The second reason is the poverty of many homeless people, especially in our inner cities. As for the supply of accommodation to rent, Wandsworth council has acted exactly as the Government wished. In Wandsworth, we see the full effects of Conservative housing policies as wished by central Government and by the Prime Minister's favourite local authority. Since 1979, the Government have said that housing must bear the brunt of public expenditure cuts. In Wandsworth, no new council housing has been started since the Conservatives took control of the council in 1978. I do not complain about the right of council tenants to buy their homes, but Wandsworth council has a policy of designating flats and houses in desirable areas and saying that when they become empty they should be sold. They are not made available to people on the waiting list, the homeless or people in desperate need of accommodation.
Moreover, the council has sold whole blocks and council estates to speculators. Some had to be cleared because of asbestos and were then sold to speculators which, in turn, sell them at prices ranging up to £120,000 for a two-bedroomed flat. Wandsworth council has sold about 1,000 properties to people not on the waiting list and not even living in Wandsworth. That excludes the property sold to speculators, which has often been sold in turn to people from outside Wandsworth.
The result is that the housing pressures are becoming intolerable. Families which have a good case for transfer but which are not necessarily homeless are not being offered alternative accommodation, because there is none, and homeless people are even further down the queue for the chance of getting a decent home.
It might be appropriate to show what the council's priorities are. A family—I have permission to use the name—called Mr. and Mrs. Meredith, who have two children, live in my constituency. Their 18-month-old son is extremely handicapped with cerebral palsy. They desperately need larger accommodation, and they are 65th on the list for transfer. Yet within a few hundred yards of where they live is an empty council property that would be perfectly suitable for them. It has been empty since June this year and it has not even been valued for sale. It is awaiting a purchaser. Is that not disgraceful?
I quote the example of a family of seven—two adults with five children—who live in a two-bedroomed flat. The flat is very damp—I have visited it—and they are desperately overcrowded. But they will be offered nothing in the foreseeable future because they are too far down the list. What chance do homeless people have?
Occasionally, there are glimmers of hope. On 10 December, in the other place, Lord Skelmersdale said:
But for those who cannot afford to buy their homes the range of choice in the rented sector, public and private, is much more restricted. It is this that needs our concentration now.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 December 1986; Vol. 482, c.1180.]1536 It may need the Government's concentration, but there is precious little sign that the Government are doing anything about it.In Wandsworth, about 7,700 people are on the waiting list and about 5,700 families are on the transfer list. They and the families who live in bed and breakfast accommodation are too poor to buy the properties that Wandsworth has for sale. On the Government's own figures, quoted earlier this year, mortgage default is increasingly a reason for people becoming homeless. I am not saying that that is the main reason for people becoming homeless in Wandsworth, but it must be an element when 10 per cent. of people become homeless as a result of court orders for mortgage default. Perhaps such people are not all the families who become homeless in Wandsworth. Their poverty may be such that they have never had the chance to buy in the first place.
We should consider for a moment what it is like being in bed and breakfast accommodation, because that is what we are sentencing so many of our people to live in for such a long time. I wish that the Minister, tonight or on any Friday evening I have one, would come to an advice session and listen to the cries of desperation and to people who burst into tears because they are so distressed about their inadequate housing or homelessness, and their unwillingness to have another night with their children in bed and breakfast accommodation. There is a real sense of bitterness, and I wish that the Minister would listen directly to what they have to say.
It is understandable that people should feel so desperate. Often, they are moved into bed and breakfast accommodation outside the borough and are isolated from their families who might give them support. If children are of school age, they have to be moved to another school. We all know how poor are the amenities in these bed and breakfast places. There may be poor or no facilities for washing clothes, which for a mother with a baby can be difficult, and there may be inadequate or no cooking facilities. We know from figures that two thirds of homeless families tend to be single parent families. Only recently, the Minister said:
We recognise, however, that there is a need to get homeless families out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation as quickly as possible, not only because we are concerned at the size of the bill to the public purse…but because such accommodation is generally unsuitable for families with children."—[Official Report, 5 December 1986; Vol. 106, c. 1256]That is the understatement of the year.I was approached by a woman with a child who found conditions so intolerable that she managed to find friends who would temporarily put her up until the council would move her to the next stage of bed-and-breakfast accommodation. "Not so," said the council when it found out. "You are not in the bed-and-breakfast place, so you are not eligible to move on to the next stage. Take your chance on the transfer list." She would never have got far on that. This is another example of the council treating bed-and-breakfast accommodation as punishment, for which people have to serve time.
I have another of these horror stories of the deprivation that people feel. I can read a letter, although I am not permitted to mention the individual's name. The letter comes from a woman in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, who says:
I am now registered as disabled and I receive Invalidity Benefit amounting to £81.15 per week, I pay £50 for my room 1537 and £5 to a Catalogue firm. I spend the remaining money on food which is limited to most cheap cafes, as cooking facilities are available if you have utensils which I have not. If it was not for close friends and common sense I would not be able to eat 1 or 2 decent meals a week, but I am sure a lot of people in this type of accommodation do not eat regular cooked meals. Most people…live off the breakfast we receive, which is a small bowl of corn flakes, two slices of toast and a cup of tea or coffee and they make do for the rest of the day. The system is an absolute disgrace for people who got into a situation which is often no fault of their own choosing.We are not all layabouts who just like living off the state." That woman had been the victim of a serious criminal attack some time before. The manager of the hotel wrote a letter in which he said that because of her medical condition, it was impossible to look after her adequately. She has severe asthma. In another letter to me she says:I have to climb 60 stairs to my room at present and this is extremely difficult due to my Asthma.She requires constant medical attention during the night for her asthma. Before she moved into the accommodation,
one of my family takes it in turns to stay overnight in case need a Nebulizer. I have my own machine by my bed but I need help to operate it. This is impossible while I am in B & B as they cannot stay overnight.There are countless examples of people in the same desperate situation. I do not think that the cost argument is the main argument, but whether one argues about the cost or, more importantly, about the human lives involved, that is no way to treat our fellow citizens. I appreciate that Wandsworth council, aided and abetted by the Minister and his Government friends, want the council to have a policy that says that as long as the council looks after most of the people in the borough, who can buy their houses on the open market, it need not worry about those who cannot afford to buy, or who become homeless.I like to think that Britain may once again become a decent and civilised society. Consequently, I believe that we have a great responsibility for the, say, 20 per cent. of our fellow citizens who are badly housed and for that smaller but important minority who are homeless. We have no right to turn our backs on them, because they face a gloomy and desperate Christmas and a bitter new year.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Richard Tracey)The hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) has chosen to exemplify the problem of homelessness by reference to his borough of Wandsworth. I am glad that he did so, because it gives me a fine opportunity to demonstrate how a sensible housing strategy, coupled with effective housing management, can make a significant contribution to coping in a real way with the problem of homelessness.
The facts of the case speak for themselves. First, the number of homelessness households in Wandsworth, standing at 982, is well below the average for Inner London boroughs at 1,586 and is around the average for London boroughs as a whole, standing at 965. During the financial year 1985–86 the Inner London boroughs accepted an average of 1,586 households as homeless. Acceptance in Wandsworth was 40 per cent. below that level.
Secondly, if we look at the most recently available figures for the numbers of homeless households placed in bed and breakfast accommodation by the London boroughs, we find that on average the figures for the end of September 1986 were 20 per cent. higher than those for 1538 the end of June 1986. However, in Wandsworth there was actually a 16 per cent. reduction in the number of households placed in bed and breakfast by that borough. In Ealing, where the Leader of the Opposition chooses to make his home, the numbers placed in bed and breakfast by that borough increased, by contrast, almost threefold, from 117 to 325.
Some may try to argue that the level of homelessness in Wandsworth is the reverse side of the coin of that council's extremely successful sales policy. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman almost made that point. But hon. Members must be aware that since 1978 Wandsworth has pursued a vigorous policy of council house sales, involving both right to buy, voluntary sales and sales to other than sitting tenants. Over 8,500 dwellings have been sold, 4,300 of them to sitting tenants. Again, the facts speak otherwise. The level of homelessness is significantly higher in those London boroughs whose only sales policy is a rather grudging recognition of the right to buy.
To those who say that Wandsworth's sales policy is in flagrant disregard of the existence of homelessness in the borough, I point out that, in the financial year 1985–86, 47 per cent. of all Wandsworth's new lettings went to homeless families compared, interestingly enough, with only 36 per cent. in Tower Hamlets, 38 per cent. in Southwark and 41 per cent. in Hackney.
Wandsworth's policy is to get those homeless households that are in bed and breakfast hotel accommodation into permanent homes as quickly as possible. Wandsworth is able to do that by securing the rapid re-letting of its housing stock. The number of dwellings awaiting reletting in Wandsworth accounts for less than 1 per cent. of the borough's total stock of 38,000 dwellings, but in Hackney it accounts for 7 per cent. and in Tower Hamlets for 8 per cent. The result is that Wandsworth puts far fewer households into bed and breakfast accommodation than either Hackney or Tower Hamlets and, indeed, far fewer than many other boroughs, including Brent, Camden, Haringey, Newham and the Leader of the Opposition's Ealing.
The efficiency of Wandsworth's housing reletting programme is reflected in the relatively small size of the waiting list for council accommodation. Figures submitted to the Department by local authorities show that, at 1 April 1986, Wandsworth had the smallest housing waiting list of any inner London borough. This would seem to suggest that Wandsworth has been rather more successful in providing housing than have some other local authorities whose approach to the management of their housing stock is less than efficient and who have failed to appreciate that responding to housing needs means more than just providing for those who need to rent but also facilitating home ownership. It is indicative of the position that in the borough of Wandsworth there are nearly three times as many people on the special waiting list for those wishing to buy council dwellings—15,000 to 20,000—a list which gives priority to existing council tenants, as there are on the waiting list for those wishing to rent, of whom there are 6,981.
But Wandsworth's sales are not just the other dimension of a more comprehensive approach to meeting housing needs in the locality. They are also about releasing additional resources to supplement the borough's HIP allocation to assist major capital repairs and improvements to the existing stock and to provide capital for lending to housing associations. In 1985–86, for example, 1539 Wandsworth spent £45 million on its own housing stock, using some £28 million of receipts on top of a basic HIP allocation of £17 million. No other inner London borough has generated such a high ratio of capital receipts to basic allocation. The availability of these additional resources has helped to reduce the need to have dwellings standing empty for long periods awaiting repairs. In some other London boroughs properties have been lying empty awaiting repairs for two years or more. Altogether, there is in London a total of nearly 7,000 council-owned dwellings awaiting repair or improvement.
At the same time, the council, although it does not itself build new dwellings, is an active supporter of housing associations whose new building and renovation programmes form a major plank of its housing strategy. In the financial year 1985–86, Wandsworth spent over £5 million through its lending programme in support of housing association schemes, many of which will accommodate households that might otherwise have been homeless.
The lessons to be learnt from the Wandsworth case are that, by the effective management of housing resources, a local authority can be successful in containing the problem of homelessness. Although the primary responsibility for dealing with the problem of homelessness rests with the local authorities, I should make it clear that the Government do not propose to let local authorities face this problem alone. As I have said on previous occasions—in fact, earlier this morning—the Government fully recognise the problem of homelessness and are taking action on a number of fronts to deal with it.
Let me illustrate this action by briefly listing some of the initiatives that the Government have put in train. First, there has been a £390 million increase in the total resources available for local authorities' capital spending on housing for 1987–88. Secondly, there has been approval in principle of an additional £14 million of housing capital resources for London boroughs in the current financial year through the Department's urban housing renewal unit, now rechristened Estate Action. Of this sum, £8 million has already been allocated to schemes now under way. Essentially, these resources are to support the necessary capital investment to under-pin measures to improve the standards and effectiveness of management. Wandsworth has received £1.6 million from Estate Action in the current financial year as a contribution to a major scheme of works at the 900-unit Doddington estate—an area well known by the hon. Member for Battersea—an investment which will help homeless families by releasing more accommodation to let. The Government are increasing the amount of funding available to Estate Action from £50 million in the current financial year to £75 million in 1987–88.
We are making additional resources available from this year's Estate Action budget to help local authorities with homelessness problems bring back into use in the current financial year empty dwellings on their estates. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing has already given approval in principle to the funding of three schemes in Newham, Greenwich and Islington at a total estimated cost of nearly £700,000. Wandsworth is among the 1540 London boroughs that have been invited to submit a bid for these resources and an initial bid has been received and is now under consideration by my Department.
We are allocating an additional £20 million to the Housing Corporation next year to generate an additional £45 million to £50 million from private sources for priority works aimed at getting homeless families out of bed and breakfast hotels and at providing accommodation for young people moving to cities to take up jobs in areas where there is a shortage of rented housing. As one of the Housing Corporation's priority areas for funding, Wandsworth stands to benefit from a significant share of these resources which we expect to make a major contribution to getting homeless households out of bed and breakfast accommodation. We have increased to £500,000 the amount of grant aid to the voluntary bodies concerned with homelessness to £500,000. Our grant aiding of the Greater London mobility scheme is designed to enable people to be housed as and where accommodation is available.
We have invited local authorities to put forward for consideration on their merits requests to acquire buildings suitable for use as temporary hostel accommodation for homeless families. Although, to date, only a few local authorities have come forward with proposals, consent has already been given to acquisitions which at any one time will afford temporary accommodation to at least 100 homeless people, and we now await further applications.
The desired effect of all these measures is to bring about a significant reduction in the number of homeless households placed in bed and breakfast hotels by local authorities, particularly in London. Such accommodation is generally quite unsuitable for families with children, yet, despite the fact that the Department's code of guidance to local authorities on this matter makes it crystal clear that bed and breakfast accommodation is to be used only in the last resort, London boroughs spent some £26 million on it in 1985–86.
The Government, in discussion with the local authorities, will go on searching for and exploring new ways of approaching the problem of homelessness. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction will be meeting representatives of the local authority associations early in January to discuss a number of matters relating to the problem of homelessness and to follow up some of the issues that emerged at a meeting between Ministers and local authority representatives earlier this year.
The Government are also looking closely at the measures that the local authorities are implementing, including incentive schemes to encourage council tenants to buy in the private sector, thus releasing their former council accommodation for those who most need to rent, and at the short-term leasing of private sector properties.
I should like to conclude by emphasising that there is no single or, indeed, simple solution to the problem of homelessness. Not all the solutions are in the Government's hands—far from it. We shall continue our dialogue with the local authorities with a view to pressing forward on this issue. There is a great deal of scope for local enterprise and initiative and a will to act, such as that demonstrated by the local authorities that are giving incentives to council tenants to buy in the private sector and to the type of enterprise so well demonstrated by the borough of Wandsworth.