Last week Crisis attended Conservative Party Conference to meet with MPs to help ensure that ending homelessness remains high on the political agenda.

Many predicted that the conference would be dominated by Brexit and leadership tussles, and whilst there's no doubt these loomed large, we were also pleased to see homelessness and housing feature heavily.

We held a joint event with political blog Conservative Home on how the Government can meet its commitment to halve rough sleeping over the course of this Parliament. We were joined by the Minister with responsibility for homelessness, Marcus Jones MP, Bob Blackman MP, who led the Homelessness Reduction Act successfully through Parliament this year and Andy Street, the new mayor for the West Midlands, who has made tackling rough sleeping and homelessness in the region a priority. 

Our Chief Executive, Jon Sparkes, also spoke at an event hosted by the Centre for Social Justice, at which at the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government continued to reaffirm his commitment to Housing First.

And here's a rundown of the top announcements that were made: 

Social Housing  

One of the key announcements from the Prime Minister's speech on the final day of conference was a plan for a 'new generation' of council and housing association homes. To deliver this, funding for affordable housing is set to increase by £2 billion to £9 billion. It is expected that the additional funding will be used to build around 25,0000 more homes at rents below market rents. Ministers also confirmed plans to create more certainty for councils and housing associations by 2020 by setting a long term rent deal to help deliver the new supply. 

With hundreds of thousands of people facing homelessness across the country, this announcement could not come soon enough. For this ambition to be achieved we need to ensure that enough homes are built and that those who are homeless, and in the greatest housing need, are able to access them. New research out from Crisis last week showed that the number of new social lets to single homeless people has been falling disproportionately since 2007/8. Analysis showed that this is largely because of social housing allocations policies can block people with a history of rent arrears or anti-social behaviour from joining housing registers and that increased use of affordability checks often mean that homeless households are deemed too poor to qualify. A review of allocation policies will be crucial to ensure that the Government meets its objective and that these new homes contribute to ending homelessness. 

Steps to greater professionalising private renting 

Kicking off Conference on Sunday, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Rt Hon Sajid Javid, announced measures to help protect renters from rogue landlords and help professionalise the sector. Plans to require all landlords to sign up to a redress scheme, which would give tenants much greater recourse to challenge landlords, will be essential in tackling the worst practice in the sector. 

Over conference season, we have been asking MPs to put pressure on Government to fund Help to Rent projects [link to most recent H2R blog] and create and underwrite a national rent deposit guarantee to help homeless people rent. This will ensure that in addition to improving conditions across the sector, renting is made more affordable and accessible for people who are homeless and in the most vulnerable situation. You can support our campaign here. 

Support for people moving onto Universal Credit 

The Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s announced that people moving onto Universal Credit that are in need of an advance payment will be able to receive the payment within five days, or on the same day if necessary. This will provide some reassurance for people who may struggle to make ends meet as the current wait for receiving the first Universal Credit payment is a minimum of six weeks. For Universal Credit to work for the most vulnerable, we have to ensure it is enabling people to achieve financial stability, so that they are able to secure stable housing and a route into employment. Our work on a Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer with Newcastle City Council and Jobcentre Plus is looking at the most effective way of providing this range of support, which includes better identifying UC claimants who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. We would like the Government to ensure that all local authorities are taking this approach to implementing Universal Credit and that crucially homeless people are not subject to the seven waiting days for Universal Credit. 

Next steps 

Crisis welcomes the priority given to homelessness at both the Labour and Conservative Party Conference. Moving forward the Government must ensure that progressive policies such as increasing social house building and improving the private rented sector are carefully designed to ensure that homeless people and those on the very incomes genuinely benefit. Key to this will be ensuring that we have a robust cross government strategy on preventing and tackling homelessness to ensure that this good work is not been unintentionally undermined by other policies.