Rough Sleepers Initiative
Encyclopedia
The Rough Sleepers Initiative was an initiative by the Government of the United Kingdom's Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU). It was designed to accommodate homeless people with emergency hostels.
Many had severe and enduring mental health problems like Schizophrenia schizophrenia
, which made them 'homeless and rootless' or meant they had no settled way of life. Others had impoverished or no social support from family or friends. Some had left institutions like the army, prison, care homes or psychiatric hospitals.
These migrants slept in places that were mainly hidden from public view. Lincoln's Inn Fields
was one site, the arches under Waterloo Bridge and the area behind the Royal Festival Hall
were others. The most famous was the area covered by Hungerford Bridge by Embankment Station, where charity 'soup runs' handed out food and blankets, medical assistance and other forms of social support including offers of a bed for the night - a 'kip'.
Gradually during the 1980s a number of factors combined to turn what had been a background issue into a social and political crisis.
Rising property values turned Victorian terraced family housing into marketable assets where their owners had been making ends meet by renting rooms to low-skilled migrant labourers. These lodgings or 'digs' were often run by women 'landladies', who provided some social support as well as basic lodgings and meals for an affordable rent. These were sold off through this period leaving their one-time residents homeless.
A slowdown in the merchant shipping and docks in London led to a layoff of men who were mobile and had been well paid but in idleness had nowhere to go and found work hard to come by
Changes in government policy designed to improve the accommodation standards for hostel
dwellers closed an estimated 5,000 places in London hostels were closed. This loss of basic shelter put the numbers of people sleeping rough into the thousands on the streets of the UK capital.
There was a view that 'Care in the Community' had led to psychiatric hospital patients being turned out into the streets. Though this was never substantiated many ex-patients did suffer neglect and abuse once released.
News coverage of the rising street population became a part of the mood music to the Tory government's unravelling social and economic policy agenda.
In 1989 homelessness charity, St Mungo's organised National Sleep Out Week to highlight the problem and give a focus to the mood of concern. The second such event in 1990 was discussed in Parliament and recorded in Hansard (view here). Coverage was repeated in 1991 and the diminishing popularity of Mrs Thatcher's premiership was highlighted by the 30,000 people said to have slept out to raise awareness and funds to help homeless people.
Mrs Thatcher's fall from grace with her parliamentary party is dated to a speech by her Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Howe
, whose wife Elspeth took a leading role in publicising the homelessness campaign and is widely credited with writing the speech that her husband delivered in Parliament leading to his boss's political demise.
I n 1993, Michael Leapman wrote in the Independent,
"She has also been an active campaigner against homelessness. In June 1990 she was one of several prominent people who spent the night in a cardboard box to highlight the problem.
"Sir Geoffrey was then still a member of the Cabinet and Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, was furious at Lady Howe's gesture. It helped to widen the rift that led first to Sir Geoffrey's resignation (it was said that Lady Howe wrote his speech) and thence to Mrs Thatcher's removal from office."
Once Mrs Thatcher had gone, Sir George Young bt, a Tory 'wet' with a long-standing interest in homelessness and a solid reputation amongst campaigners, was appointed housing minister with 200 million GBP to spend on getting people off the streets.
The level of street homelessness
(rough sleeping) has declined steadily in England since the late 1980s following a number of successful government-funded programmes introduced from 1990 onwards by both Conservative
and Labour
governments.
These initiatives are often referred to as the Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI). In fact, the three phases of the RSI lasted from 1990 until 1999. Until 1997 the RSI was concentrated on London
where the number of rough sleepers was far higher than in any other part of the country. In 1997 the RSI was extended to 36 other areas of England. In 1999, following the publication of a government report ‘Coming in from the Cold’, the RSI was replaced by a new programme, overseen by the RSU, which had been created in the previous year following the election of a Labour government.
The RSI commenced in 1990 as a result of a continuous rise in rough sleeping during much of the 1980s, notably in central London where the number of rough sleepers was particularly high and visible, and therefore political sensitivity around the numbers, especially pronounced.
During the 1980s a number of large encampments of rough sleepers grew up in various places, usually referred to by the media as 'Cardboard City'. In fact Cardboard City was in a sense a mobile city. In the early 1980s it existed close to the River Thames
at the London
Embankment tube station
and was closed as a rough sleepers site by Westminster City Council
working with the voluntary sector so that the space used by rough sleepers could be upgraded into a retail shopping area. Many rough sleepers were assisted to find permanent accommodation (self-contained council and housing association flats) through the resettlement work that was undertaken prior to the site being closed.
Cardboard City then relocated to Lincoln's Inn Fields
, a central London park, where a similar closure operation took place in the late 1980s, and then onto a site in South London
, ‘the Bullring’, where a third closure operation took place in the early 1990s. On each occasion some parts of the voluntary sector engaged with the relevant local authority to support the clearance of rough sleepers from the area. The justification for doing this was not only the inevitability of the closure but also the offer of additional help for the rough sleepers affected, including access to permanent accommodation and extra help to address other support needs associated with poor mental and physical health and substance misuse.
Some organisations opted to not be part of this partnership on the grounds that for rough sleepers it was an infringement of their liberty and would lead to rough sleepers being displaced elsewhere. Indeed the evidence showed that some people did not take up the offer of help and moved to sleep at a different site. However, others were successfully housed and were able to maintain their accommodation, with support.
By the late 1980s in London approximately 1,000 men and women could be found sleeping on the streets of central London on any one night, mostly in the central London borough
s of Westminster
, Camden
and Lambeth
. The increase in rough sleeping arose for a variety of reasons including:
The three phases of the RSI ran from 1990 until 1999 costing the government in total over £200 million. Running concurrently in the early phase was a connected initiative called the Homeless Mentally Ill Initiative (HMII) which arose from public concern about the danger posed by rough sleepers with mental health problems both to the public and to themselves. The HMII was modest in size compared to the RSI but led to the creation of a range of high quality temporary and permanent self-contained accommodation for rough sleepers with mental health problems and included the funding of linked mental health teams to support and complement the work of the generic housing teams providing residential support.
The RSI concentrated on funding:
The initiative was essentially a partnership between central and local government and the voluntary sector. Additionally, housing associations, health care providers, the police and local businesses were also engaged within what became labelled a multi-agency approach. This was reflected at government level in the creation of an inter-departmental ministerial group to draw together different government departments with responsibilities for people sleeping rough.
The voluntary sector organisations were funded directly by government to provide services. Central government took the unusual step of funding directly as it had little confidence in local authorities to address the problem of rough sleeping. Furthermore, in London the Margaret Thatcher
administration of the 1980s had dissolved the Greater London Council
and there was therefore no regional body in the capital in a position to take on funding responsibility.
The delivery structure model was based around a number of local consortia that did not take account of local authority boundaries but were instead constructed around the main rough sleeping areas in central London. The consortia were extremely inclusive and as such, often unwieldy due to the size of the membership which included representatives from the voluntary, local government, central government and business sectors.
The RSI, through its various phases succeeded in the following areas:
The limitations of the RSI were that:
, to prioritise the key social issues to be tackled by the new administration. Rough sleeping was selected as a high priority and the RSU was created, headed up by a high profile and plain-speaking ‘homelessness tsar’ called Louise Casey
.
The RSU was tasked with reducing rough sleeping across England by two-thirds within a three-year time frame. As the programme was late to start, this was in the end compressed into a period of slightly over two years. The practical and ideological approach of the RSU differed markedly from the RSI. Notably:
The RSU funding approach was also different in the following ways:
The RSU phase came to an end in 2002 following the successful reduction by 70% of rough sleeping across England, so achieving the Prime Minister’s target of a two-thirds reduction. In London the reduction was more modest and the two-thirds reduction target was not met.
The following factors led to the RSU being successful:
There were criticisms of the RSU’s approach from a number of quarters and its successes were not unqualified. In particular:
In the last year England has experienced a 9% rise in rough sleeping and there is renewed interest in reducing numbers of rough sleepers on the streets of London following the selection of London as host city for the 2012 Olympics.
Background
London, as the UK's capital city, has always attracted large numbers of migrants unable to find affordable housing. Other large towns and cities had similar populations of homeless people and some sleeping rough but on a much smaller scale.Many had severe and enduring mental health problems like Schizophrenia schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
, which made them 'homeless and rootless' or meant they had no settled way of life. Others had impoverished or no social support from family or friends. Some had left institutions like the army, prison, care homes or psychiatric hospitals.
These migrants slept in places that were mainly hidden from public view. Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...
was one site, the arches under Waterloo Bridge and the area behind the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
were others. The most famous was the area covered by Hungerford Bridge by Embankment Station, where charity 'soup runs' handed out food and blankets, medical assistance and other forms of social support including offers of a bed for the night - a 'kip'.
Gradually during the 1980s a number of factors combined to turn what had been a background issue into a social and political crisis.
Rising property values turned Victorian terraced family housing into marketable assets where their owners had been making ends meet by renting rooms to low-skilled migrant labourers. These lodgings or 'digs' were often run by women 'landladies', who provided some social support as well as basic lodgings and meals for an affordable rent. These were sold off through this period leaving their one-time residents homeless.
A slowdown in the merchant shipping and docks in London led to a layoff of men who were mobile and had been well paid but in idleness had nowhere to go and found work hard to come by
Changes in government policy designed to improve the accommodation standards for hostel
Homeless shelter
Homeless shelters are temporary residences for homeless people which seek to protect vulnerable populations from the often devastating effects of homelessness while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community...
dwellers closed an estimated 5,000 places in London hostels were closed. This loss of basic shelter put the numbers of people sleeping rough into the thousands on the streets of the UK capital.
There was a view that 'Care in the Community' had led to psychiatric hospital patients being turned out into the streets. Though this was never substantiated many ex-patients did suffer neglect and abuse once released.
News coverage of the rising street population became a part of the mood music to the Tory government's unravelling social and economic policy agenda.
In 1989 homelessness charity, St Mungo's organised National Sleep Out Week to highlight the problem and give a focus to the mood of concern. The second such event in 1990 was discussed in Parliament and recorded in Hansard (view here). Coverage was repeated in 1991 and the diminishing popularity of Mrs Thatcher's premiership was highlighted by the 30,000 people said to have slept out to raise awareness and funds to help homeless people.
Mrs Thatcher's fall from grace with her parliamentary party is dated to a speech by her Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Howe
Geoffrey Howe
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, CH, QC, PC is a former British Conservative politician. He was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and finally Leader of the House of Commons...
, whose wife Elspeth took a leading role in publicising the homelessness campaign and is widely credited with writing the speech that her husband delivered in Parliament leading to his boss's political demise.
I n 1993, Michael Leapman wrote in the Independent,
"She has also been an active campaigner against homelessness. In June 1990 she was one of several prominent people who spent the night in a cardboard box to highlight the problem.
"Sir Geoffrey was then still a member of the Cabinet and Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, was furious at Lady Howe's gesture. It helped to widen the rift that led first to Sir Geoffrey's resignation (it was said that Lady Howe wrote his speech) and thence to Mrs Thatcher's removal from office."
Once Mrs Thatcher had gone, Sir George Young bt, a Tory 'wet' with a long-standing interest in homelessness and a solid reputation amongst campaigners, was appointed housing minister with 200 million GBP to spend on getting people off the streets.
The level of street homelessness
Homelessness
Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...
(rough sleeping) has declined steadily in England since the late 1980s following a number of successful government-funded programmes introduced from 1990 onwards by both Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
and Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
governments.
These initiatives are often referred to as the Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI). In fact, the three phases of the RSI lasted from 1990 until 1999. Until 1997 the RSI was concentrated on London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where the number of rough sleepers was far higher than in any other part of the country. In 1997 the RSI was extended to 36 other areas of England. In 1999, following the publication of a government report ‘Coming in from the Cold’, the RSI was replaced by a new programme, overseen by the RSU, which had been created in the previous year following the election of a Labour government.
The RSI commenced in 1990 as a result of a continuous rise in rough sleeping during much of the 1980s, notably in central London where the number of rough sleepers was particularly high and visible, and therefore political sensitivity around the numbers, especially pronounced.
During the 1980s a number of large encampments of rough sleepers grew up in various places, usually referred to by the media as 'Cardboard City'. In fact Cardboard City was in a sense a mobile city. In the early 1980s it existed close to the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
at the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
Embankment tube station
Embankment tube station
Embankment is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster, known by various names during its history. It is served by the Circle, District, Northern and Bakerloo lines. On the Northern and Bakerloo lines, the station is between Waterloo and Charing Cross stations; on the Circle and...
and was closed as a rough sleepers site by Westminster City Council
Westminster City Council
Westminster City Council is the local authority for the City of Westminster in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council and is entitled to be known as a city council, which is a rare distinction in the United Kingdom. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors...
working with the voluntary sector so that the space used by rough sleepers could be upgraded into a retail shopping area. Many rough sleepers were assisted to find permanent accommodation (self-contained council and housing association flats) through the resettlement work that was undertaken prior to the site being closed.
Cardboard City then relocated to Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...
, a central London park, where a similar closure operation took place in the late 1980s, and then onto a site in South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
, ‘the Bullring’, where a third closure operation took place in the early 1990s. On each occasion some parts of the voluntary sector engaged with the relevant local authority to support the clearance of rough sleepers from the area. The justification for doing this was not only the inevitability of the closure but also the offer of additional help for the rough sleepers affected, including access to permanent accommodation and extra help to address other support needs associated with poor mental and physical health and substance misuse.
Some organisations opted to not be part of this partnership on the grounds that for rough sleepers it was an infringement of their liberty and would lead to rough sleepers being displaced elsewhere. Indeed the evidence showed that some people did not take up the offer of help and moved to sleep at a different site. However, others were successfully housed and were able to maintain their accommodation, with support.
By the late 1980s in London approximately 1,000 men and women could be found sleeping on the streets of central London on any one night, mostly in the central London borough
London borough
The administrative area of Greater London contains thirty-two London boroughs. Inner London comprises twelve of these boroughs plus the City of London. Outer London comprises the twenty remaining boroughs of Greater London.-Functions:...
s of Westminster
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...
, Camden
London Borough of Camden
In 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise swiftly throughout the 19th century, as the district became built up; reaching 270,197 in the middle of the century...
and Lambeth
London Borough of Lambeth
The London Borough of Lambeth is a London borough in south London, England and forms part of Inner London. The local authority is Lambeth London Borough Council.-Origins:...
. The increase in rough sleeping arose for a variety of reasons including:
- A reduction in the number of hostelHostelHostels provide budget oriented, sociable accommodation where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, in a dormitory and share a bathroom, lounge and sometimes a kitchen. Rooms can be mixed or single-sex, although private rooms may also be available...
(shelter) bed-spaces in London as a result of hostels being up-graded from dormitory accommodation into single room accommodation, leading to higher quality hostels but with fewer bed-spaces.
- Reductions in benefitBenefitBenefit or Benefits may refer to:* Benefit concert, any activity performed for a charitable purpose* Benefit , an album by Jethro Tull* "Benefits" , a 2009 episode of the show How I Met Your Mother...
levels and related restrictions impacting on young people under 25, leading to an increase in rough sleeping amongst this age group.
- An increase in levels of unemploymentUnemploymentUnemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
in the UK, inevitably impacting on the ability of people on low incomes to maintain accommodation.
- A reduction in the number of social housing units being built and a loss of social housing units as people took up the ‘right to buy’ their local authority council accommodation through an initiative introduced by the Conservative government.
The three phases of the RSI ran from 1990 until 1999 costing the government in total over £200 million. Running concurrently in the early phase was a connected initiative called the Homeless Mentally Ill Initiative (HMII) which arose from public concern about the danger posed by rough sleepers with mental health problems both to the public and to themselves. The HMII was modest in size compared to the RSI but led to the creation of a range of high quality temporary and permanent self-contained accommodation for rough sleepers with mental health problems and included the funding of linked mental health teams to support and complement the work of the generic housing teams providing residential support.
The RSI concentrated on funding:
- The building of almost 4,000 units of accommodation (mostly self-contained, some shared) for rough sleepers across London with the majority of units constructed in south London where land is cheaper.
- Resettlement teams tasked with referring appropriate rough sleepers into the RSI accommodation and supporting them so that they could maintain the accommodation.
- Street outreach teams such as those run by Thames ReachThames ReachThames Reach is a London based charity working with homeless men and women.- Services :Its services include outreach work with rough sleepers, a range of hostels and supported housing projects, and schemes which focus on supporting people who have experienced homelessness by helping them develop...
St Mungo's and Broadway making the initial contact with rough sleepers.
- Basic emergency winter shelters in temporary buildings.
- Spaces for rough sleepers in hostels.
The initiative was essentially a partnership between central and local government and the voluntary sector. Additionally, housing associations, health care providers, the police and local businesses were also engaged within what became labelled a multi-agency approach. This was reflected at government level in the creation of an inter-departmental ministerial group to draw together different government departments with responsibilities for people sleeping rough.
The voluntary sector organisations were funded directly by government to provide services. Central government took the unusual step of funding directly as it had little confidence in local authorities to address the problem of rough sleeping. Furthermore, in London the Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
administration of the 1980s had dissolved the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
and there was therefore no regional body in the capital in a position to take on funding responsibility.
The delivery structure model was based around a number of local consortia that did not take account of local authority boundaries but were instead constructed around the main rough sleeping areas in central London. The consortia were extremely inclusive and as such, often unwieldy due to the size of the membership which included representatives from the voluntary, local government, central government and business sectors.
The RSI, through its various phases succeeded in the following areas:
- It successfully brought together key players around a focused task of reducing rough sleeping.
- Although there were delays in the building of new accommodation for rough sleepers, eventually almost 4,000 units of mostly self-contained accommodation was built with the intention of being for rough sleepers ‘in perpetuity’.
- Resettlement teams ensured that rough sleepers were not only found accommodation, but helped to maintain their tenancy, with some success.
- Outreach teams working in central London provided a greater presence than ever before and developed a process for ‘gate-keeping’ access to the rough sleepers units to avoid them being filled by people who had not slept rough who invariably have lower needs.
- Most importantly, the number of rough sleepers to be found on London’s streets on any one night fell from around 1,000 to 270 by 1995.
The limitations of the RSI were that:
- Although numbers fell, by the mid-1990s a plateau seemed to have been reached and although rough sleepers continued to be helped off the street, new rough sleepers took their place.
- Resettlement support offered from the teams was short-term, often for only six months, and as a result statistics showed that almost 20% of people helped into self-contained accommodation left within one-year, often to returning to the street.
- The ‘gate-keeping’ of accommodation by the voluntary sector organisations was very mixed with some agencies undertaking it with greater diligence than others. Spot checks on the self-contained accommodation meant exclusively for rough sleepers exposed that a significant minority of people referred to rough sleeper accommodation had, in fact, never slept rough.
Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU)
By 1997 the incoming Labour government wanted a different and more effective approach to dealing with rough sleeping. It created the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU), situated within the Prime Minister’s Cabinet OfficeCabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....
, to prioritise the key social issues to be tackled by the new administration. Rough sleeping was selected as a high priority and the RSU was created, headed up by a high profile and plain-speaking ‘homelessness tsar’ called Louise Casey
Louise Casey
Louise Casey is a British civil servant and former Victims' Commissioner of the United Kingdom. She became deputy director of Shelter in 1992, the head of the Rough Sleepers' Unit in 1999, the director of the national Anti-Social Behaviour Unit in 2003, and the head of the Respect Task Force in...
.
The RSU was tasked with reducing rough sleeping across England by two-thirds within a three-year time frame. As the programme was late to start, this was in the end compressed into a period of slightly over two years. The practical and ideological approach of the RSU differed markedly from the RSI. Notably:
- The head of the RSU, Louise Casey led the programme on a very ‘hands on’ basis, routinely going onto the street herself with her team, directly making referrals into hostels and tracking rough sleepers with the explicit objective of ‘shaking up’ the system where she perceived it to be failing. Her team comprised career civil servants and also an array of individuals hand-picked from the voluntary sector to work with her.
- The approach required from outreach teams was different, with teams expected to be more assertive in their approach to rough sleepers. The approach from staff to rough sleepers changed from one characterised by ‘working with you at your own pace’ to the more direct ‘why are you here and what do you need to help you get off the street?’
The RSU funding approach was also different in the following ways:
- Outreach teams continued to be funded, now known as Contact and Assessment Teams (CATS), as an important element of the programme but the number of teams was reduced to avoid duplication and to give greater ownership of geographical areas in central London.
- Resettlement teams were reshaped into six Tenancy Sustainment Teams (TSTs) operating on a geographical basis, with the task of sustaining former rough sleepers in self-contained accommodation and with no time limit imposed concerning the length of time over which support could be offered.
- The RSU concentrated on providing additional resources to frontline hostels, rather than on funding a large flat-building programme. Through its financial investment in hostels the RSU was able to ring-fence bed-spaces in the hostels for rough sleepers, so increasing the throughput of people coming in off the streets. It also funded specialist bed-spaces for people with drug and alcohol problems.
- Night centres were funded in London, BristolBristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
and ManchesterManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
to provide easy access off the streets and an inviting environment for rough sleepers who were unwilling to take up a hostel bed or were banned from hostels.
- A series of temporary (‘rolling’) shelters were funded to provide basic emergency, short-stay accommodation for rough sleepers as a replacement for the seasonal winter shelter programme.
- The consortium model was re-shaped to be more streamlined and focused with fewer partners, less bureaucracy and stronger leadership required from local authorities.
- More attention was given to tracking rough sleepers through the hostel system and to sharing information between partner organisations via a central database called ‘Chain’.
- A stronger role was given to the police with additional funding coming from central government to fund the Safer Streets Police Team to work with street users (not just entrenched rough sleepers but street drinkers, people begging on the street, new arrivals to the street etc).
- Attention was given to tackling what were seen as the magnets drawing people back into street homelessness, including street begging and soup runs provided by faith groups. For example, the RSU ran a high-profile campaign aimed at discouraging the public from giving money to people begging on the street.
The RSU phase came to an end in 2002 following the successful reduction by 70% of rough sleeping across England, so achieving the Prime Minister’s target of a two-thirds reduction. In London the reduction was more modest and the two-thirds reduction target was not met.
The following factors led to the RSU being successful:
- The high–profile leadership given by the Head of the RSU linked with the importance given to the reduction in rough sleeping by the Prime Minister Tony BlairTony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
had a galvanising effect and created considerable momentum.
- The direct approach taken by the RSU coupled with a more assertive outreach approach successfully reduced the numbers of rough sleepers at key central London ‘hotspots’. Where before rough sleepers congregated in groups of up to 100, by 2001 it was rare to see a hotspot containing more than a dozen rough sleepers.
- The exclusive allocation of bed-spaces to rough sleepers in key frontline hostels created the ‘flow-through’ from the streets required to achieve the target.
- Investment in outreach teams and hostels in cities outside London such as BirminghamBirminghamBirmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and YorkYorkYork is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
where there had been little investment previously led to a dramatic drop in numbers sleeping rough.
- The TSTs proved more successful that their predecessors in sustaining former rough sleepers in tenancies with the eviction and abandonment rates plummeting from almost 20% of tenants leaving accommodation within one year of a tenancy starting to under 5%.
- The relationships between the voluntary sector organisations and the police became formalised and more effective and were characterised by a more integrated approach, rather than the different bodies working in parallel. This was illustrated in practical terms through the creation of a regular meeting involving police, local authority representatives and voluntary sector agencies at which information on rough sleepers was shared. Where appropriate and beneficial, joint street-work was undertaken.
There were criticisms of the RSU’s approach from a number of quarters and its successes were not unqualified. In particular:
- Some charities expressed severe misgivings at the assertive approach encouraged by the RSU and believed it to be too aggressive, disrespectful to rough sleepers and counter-productive. They also challenged the veracity of street counts which were increasingly perceived as intended to produce a low figure on an allotted night, rather than being a genuine reflection of the number of rough sleepers.
- The RSU concentrated on making the street count figure the headline outcome figure, giving less prominence to the fact that the numbers of rough sleepers sleeping out over a year in central London was approximately ten times the number of people sleeping rough on any single night.
- Although numbers on the streets went down, central London hostels were soon full to over-flowing with rough sleepers, many of whom had multiple needs. Critics claimed that people were being ‘warehoused’ in hostels rather than being helped to find long-term, settled accommodation.
- In London the reduction in rough sleeping was less than elsewhere in the country and in the central London borough of Westminster where over 100 people continued to sleep rough on any one night, the problem appeared particularly intractable.
Post RSU—The Homelessness Directorate
The RSU was reshaped in 2002 to become the Homelessness Directorate which, in turn, was later subsumed within the Department for Communities and Local Government. The new direction from 2002 on centred on the following priorities:- Continuing to work towards a reduction in rough sleeping but to give the lead role in achieving this to local authorities across the country, including devolving to them the funding of rough sleepers’ services.
- Each local authority was expected to develop a Homelessness Strategy, including plans for the further reduction in rough sleeping and areas with high numbers of rough sleepers were required to undertake, and report on, annual street counts.
- Central government gave greater priority and resources to reducing anti-social behaviour and the former homelessness tsar, Louise Casey was given a new role in this area as head of the Government’s Respect Task Force.
- Emphasis was placed on preventative services, particularly with the development of a new housing-related funding stream called ‘Supporting People’ which offered more opportunities to support vulnerable people in their flats in the community and so prevent the loss of accommodation and homelessness.
- Street outreach teams working with rough sleepers were also urged to prioritise preventative approaches and to consider a range of possibilities, including helping people return home, rather than referring to a hostel bed as a first option.
Conclusion
Considerable progress has been made in reducing rough sleeping in England with the voluntary sector playing a lead role. Some parts of the voluntary sector have chosen to remain outside the collaborative framework that has been created to achieve the reduction. London continues to have the biggest rough sleeping problem with between 250 and 300 individuals sleeping out on any night and almost 3,000 over a year. Nonetheless, this figure compares favourably with rough sleeping figures for other European capitals and is considerably lower than, for example, New York which has a comparable population to London.In the last year England has experienced a 9% rise in rough sleeping and there is renewed interest in reducing numbers of rough sleepers on the streets of London following the selection of London as host city for the 2012 Olympics.