Last week Crisis was at Labour Party conference to meet with MPs and Lords to ensure that homelessness remains high in the political agenda, particularly ahead of the forthcoming budget. We also held a joint fringe event with Labour List on what the Party can do both nationally and locally to end rough sleeping. All MPs noted how they had seen people sleeping rough in Brighton – unsurprising given that the number of people sleeping on the streets has gone up by 100% since 2015.

Hannah Gousy, our Policy and Public Affairs Manager, spoke at a fringe event on Housing First organised by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). At our event and at the CSJ event our recently published Liverpool Housing First feasibility study came up in discussion.  We have called on the Government to provide transitional funding to enable city regions to adopt a housing led and Housing First approach. An approach that addresses the needs of all homeless people and places emphasis on preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place. Housing First aims to give people a stable, secure home of their own as soon as possible and to build personalised support around them, placing an emphasis on individual choice, respect and citizenship.

The theme of the shadow teams working more closely together was raised by MPs numerous times. At our event, shadow homelessness minister, Melanie Onn MP, said that the shadow housing team and shadow work and pensions team were working closely together. In another fringe, shadow secretary of state for housing and planning, John Healey MP, said that the shadow housing team were also working closely with the shadow health team, this is great. We believe that for homelessness prevention to truly work we need cross-government working. As the National Audit Office report released a few weeks ago, showed, some parts of government are driving the problem of homelessness whilst other parts are left to prevent it. Cross-government working is needed to prevent this.

Universal Credit was also raised as a concern by MPs.  Many people were concerned that systems were not in place to deal with the huge number of claimants that would be added if the accelerated roll out takes place. On Friday Louise Casey, a former top civil servant, said that there should be a halt in the roll out of Universal Credit. We know that there are issues with Universal Credit and we have been calling for a reduction in the long delay before people receive their first payment and make it easier for people to have their rent paid directly to their landlords. We are working on solutions to make sure the system works for homeless people.

Jeremy Corbyn in his leader’s speech announced that a future Labour Government would implement rent controls and that John HealEy  would be undertaking a review of social housing policy.

On private renting, Crisis would like Labour to support our calls for the government to provide funding in the forthcoming budget for Help to Rent projects and a national rent deposit guarantee scheme which is run by the Help to Rent projects. These projects save money for the public purse and relieve homelessness for thousands of people a year. Funding for these projects will open up the private rental market and relieve pressure on social housing. Projects also help mitigate against some of the risks landlords associate with Universal Credit. Projects will also support National government in implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act.

All in all, useful discussions were had at Labour and we look forward to continuing to work with the party- and parties across the political spectrum- so that together we can end homelessness.

Hannah will be blogging later this week on the Conservative Party Conference.