Kelly pledges support for homeless youngsters
A package worth £164 million aimed at helping young homeless people get back on their feet has been unveiled by the government.
Communities secretary Ruth Kelly pledged £74 million next year to support the measures, and a further £90 million on improving hostels.
She said the government aimed to end the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for 16 and 17-year-olds by 2010, describing it as “unacceptable for a civilised society”.
Speaking in the run up to the 40th anniversary of seminal television drama Cathy Come Home, Ms Kelly said the government had “turned the tide” on homelessness.
In 1998, there were 1,850 homeless people sleeping rough each night, but this has been slashed to just over 500 – a drop of 73 per cent.
Despite this, local authorities in England accepted about 6,800 applications for homelessness from 16 or 17-year-olds last year. When this group was widened to 16 to 24-year-olds, the number increased to 34,500.
“The evidence is that we are successfully tackling the familiar, highly visible face of homelessness,” Ms Kelly told the Andy Ludlow homelessness awards.
“Cathy has come in, off the street. But now we must meet new challenges and deal with the changing nature of homelessness.”
The new measures include mediation services for families to deal with the fact that one in four (23 per cent) of all new homelessness cases are the result of parents no longer wanting to keep their children at home.
And education and training schemes will be made available for vulnerable youngsters, helping to transform hostels “from just being a roof over your head, to being a spring board to a job and a home”.
Despite creating a “vastly-improved safety net” to protect people from becoming homeless, Ms Kelly acknowledged with 94,000 households in temporary accommodation there was “much more to do”.
To tackle homelessness in the long term, she accepted more social housing was needed and said the government aimed to build 75,000 new homes between now and 2007-08.
However, the Liberal Democrats accused the government of failing the poorest, noting that 450,000 council homes had been sold off since 1997 and only 140,000 new social homes built.
“The fact that more than half a million people are still living in squats, hostels, on friend’s floors and in temporary accommodation is a damning indictment of this government,” said housing spokesman Dan Rogerson.
He added: “Councils must be allowed to reinvest money from the sale of old council houses to provide new social housing for those who are worst off.”
Adam Sampson, the chief executive of charity Shelter, welcomed Ms Kelly’s proposals as “positive moves which will improve the safety net for this vulnerable group”.
“Forty years ago Cathy Come Home highlighted the tragic effect on young families of having nowhere to call home – yet today there are still more than one million children trapped by bad housing or homelessness,” he said.
Shelter is calling on the government to commit to funding 20,000 extra social homes every year to help resolve the problem.
