Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 17
17
The Government will fail in its homelessness objectives if it continues to oversee the delivery...
Recommendation
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. (Paragraph 56) 38 Protecting the homeless and the private rented sector: MHCLG’s response to Covid-19 Protecting the private rented sector
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Time spent in temporary accommodation means people are getting help and it ensures no family is without a roof over their head. The Government is committed to reducing the need for temporary accommodation by preventing homelessness before it occurs. In 2021-22 local authorities are receiving £310 million through the Homelessness Prevention Grant. This funding represents a £47 million increase on the previous year and can be used to offer financial support for people to find a new home, to work with landlords to prevent evictions, or to provide temporary accommodation where homelessness cannot be prevented. This underlines the government’s commitment to fully enforcing the Homelessness Reduction Act by ensuring councils have the funding they need to prevent homelessness and help more people sooner. The Government is committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing and are investing over £12 billion in affordable housing over 5 years, the largest investment in affordable housing in a decade. This includes the new £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, which will provide up to 180,000 new homes across the country, should economic conditions allow. This programme will unlock a further £38 billion in public and private investment in affordable housing. New homes will be made available from next year. This builds upon the success of our £9 billion Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme, running to 2023, which will deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes. We’re committed to delivering affordable homes of a variety of tenures so that we can support a range of people in different circumstances and stages in their lives. The new Affordable Homes Programme will deliver more than double the social rent than the current programme, with around 32,000 social rent homes due to be delivered. Approximately half of the homes delivered will be for affordable home ownership, supporting aspiring homeowners to take their first step on to the housing ladder. Since 2010, we’ve delivered over 517,100 new affordable homes, including over 365,800 affordable homes for rent, of which 148,000 homes for social rent.