Select committee: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee

Recommendation 17

Sixth Report - Protecting the homeless and the private rented sector: MHCLG’s response to Covid-19 Published 31 Mar 2021 Paragraph 56 Addressed to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee Impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on homelessness and the private rented sector All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗

Recommendation (the committee's words)

The Government will fail in its homelessness objectives if it continues to oversee the delivery of just a few thousand social rent homes a year. The ongoing shortage of social housing is a clear, long-term obstacle to finding suitable accommodation for people suffering homelessness, as well as forcing local authorities to spend hundreds of million pounds to house families in temporary accommodation with no end in sight. Similarly, there are insufficient affordable options in the private rented sector. The Government continues to believe—without evidence—that its tenure- blind target of 300,000 is sufficient to meet its homelessness goals. We reiterate our recommendation from our report into social housing that the Government must invest in a social housebuilding programme that will deliver 90,000 social rented homes a year for at least the next ten years.

From: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, Sixth Report - Protecting the homeless and the private rented sector: MHCLG’s response to Covid-19 (HC 1329), paragraph 56, 31 March 2021

Government response

The government responded to the whole report on 25 May 2021 (deadline 31 May 2021).

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The document published on 24 May 2021 is the government response to the Committee's report on COVID-19, homelessness and the private rented sector, but the text available here does not set out the government's position on the report's recommendations.

The response is to the Committee's sixth report of Session 2019 to 2021, following its inquiry into the impact of COVID-19 on homelessness and the private rented sector.
The page describes the Committee's inquiry as considering support for rough sleepers, the wider homeless population, renters and landlords, and as making recommendations about future support.
The full response (Ref: CP 439, 16 pages) is available as HTML and PDF. Its content on agreement, disagreement or specific commitments is not included in the text provided, so none is summarised here.

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