UK: A legal right to a place to call home
|Edinburgh, Scotland: In 1975, 54 per cent of homes in Scotland were social housing – but since the 1960s, the number of social houses in the UK has declined.
By Rebecca Corbett
|Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick says prevention and support for those at risk of homelessness must go hand in hand.
Leading scholar and a Poverty Commissioner for Scotland, Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick discusses the UK’s Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, its role in tackling homelessness – and what changes are needed to reduce homelessness in 2024.
It’s 1966 – the year England won the World Cup. However, for Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick, the other significant moment was Ken Loach’s film Cathy Come Home which sparked a social movement pushing for change in homelessness policy in the UK.
The film told the story of a family who became homeless then were rehoused apart from each other, with the mother and children moving into a hostel without the father. Suzanne explains that this was standard practice at the time, but it caused public outcry – and a call for change. The UK charity Crisis was established soon after and 11 years later the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was passed.
The aim of the Act was to help people who had become homeless – specifically supporting families with children and vulnerable adults by creating a safety net to assure they were rehomed in secure permanent housing where they could live together. The Act also moved the responsibility of rehousing from social workers to the local housing authorities.
“The rights are enforceable in a court of law,” Suzanne explains. “In many countries, the right to housing is a moral statement but you can’t use it to insist that someone is rehoused. “In the UK in the 1970s there was a higher level of social housing stock available which made it easier to enact the new legislation – for example, in 1975, 54 per cent of homes in Scotland were social housing – but since the 1960s, the number of social houses in the UK has declined. The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, now encapsulated in separate consolidating legislation in all four UK jurisdictions, is internationally unique. It gives families with children and vulnerable adults who are homeless priority an enforceable legal right to long-term secure housing.
“The rights are enforceable in a court of law,” Suzanne explains. “In many countries, the right to housing is a moral statement but you can’t use it to insist that someone is rehoused.”
Suzanne also explains that the definition of homelessness in the UK is also very broad: “You are statutorily homeless if you have ‘no accommodation which is reasonable for you to occupy together with your entire family.’ People who are sleeping rough are a small minority of those accepted as statutorily homeless.
The majority of people who are accepted as being statutorily homeless in the UK are people who are currently living in inadequate or insecure accommodation – for example because of a risk to safety or being asked to leave by family and friends.
So why are families with children and vulnerable people in the UK still homeless in 2024 if there are legal protections to stop this? According to Suzanne, one of the major issues is the number of households who are stuck in temporary accommodation. In some major cities, especially London, people can be kept in housing limbo for years. At the end March 2024, for example, 117,450 households were living in temporary accommodation in England.
“Some people argue that once people are in temporary accommodation, they’re no longer homeless”, says Suzanne, “but I would argue that they are still homeless because it’s temporary.” The cost of temporary accommodation has also spiralled recently, leaving some local authorities on the brink of bankruptcy.
“If you pulled those big policy ‘levers’ of reducing poverty and increasing affordable housing, you would eliminate most homelessness. We can drive it down to very low numbers because the overwhelming majority of homelessness is preventable.
“Since devolution in 1999, the Act has been amended numerous times by the Scottish Government, gradually making it more inclusive and eventually removing the priority criteria completely so that anyone who is ‘eligible and unintentionally homeless’ has a legal right to rehousing. Suzanne explains that this is possible in part because Scotland has a much bigger social rented sector than England – 24 per cent compared to 16 per cent. In the rest of the UK, on the other hand, single homeless people are still not entitled to rehousing in most cases. Moreover, she adds, the legislation does not offer legal support to people who are ‘ineligible’ because they have migrated to the UK and do not have ‘recourse to public funds’ - 1.4 million people including 175,000 children. In London, for example, about half of those sleeping rough are not UK-born many of whom will not be able to access state benefits or statutory homelessness assistance.
The solution
Despite the challenges, Suzanne and her colleagues at I-SPHERE at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are aiming to contribute to the creation of ‘the ideal homelessness system’ which tackles the root causes of homelessness and focuses on prevention as well as creating ‘the ultimate safety net’.
“We need to drive down poverty,” says Suzanne. “Poverty is the number one driver of homelessness.” Not only can poverty lead directly to homelessness, it has also been linked to wider social challenges, such as struggles with mental health and an increased risk of addiction.
The second priority is affordable housing: “The level of social housing that’s allocated to people who are homeless can be patchy. It’s not just the scale of social housing - it’s how it’s distributed and allocated,” says Suzanne, adding that the private rental sector also has a key role to play.
Finally, Suzanne and her colleagues see a need to refocus the homelessness legislation: “We need to reorientate it in a preventative direction to ensure that we’re not waiting until people become homeless before helping them.” Change has already started – local authority guidelines for the prevention of homelessness used to focus on people who were at risk of becoming homeless in 28 days, and this has been doubled to 56 days, with plans to potentially increase this to 6 months in Scotland and Wales. Alongside her role as a Poverty Commissioner for Scotland, Suzanne has contributed to various Government and independent committees which have strengthened homelessness legislation in Scotland, England and Wales but she argues that there is more to be done.
Suzanne concludes: “The idea is that the ideal system would combine a really robust preventative approach with an absolutely rocksolid safety net for people who have become homeless. In Scotland the ultimate safety net is much stronger than elsewhere in the UK because single people are included, but we have in the past been more neglectful of prevention – so what we’re trying to do is square that circle and have the best of all worlds.”
Suzanne believes most homelessness is not just predictable but also preventable: “If you pulled those big policy ‘levers’ of reducing poverty and increasing affordable housing, you would eliminate most homelessness. We can drive it down to very low numbers because the overwhelming majority of homelessness is preventable.”
Reference: 1. Overcrowding and standard of accommodation is assessed based on the standard of housing in the local area