Is Labour really going to end homelessness?

A cross-government long-term homelessness strategy was a manifesto promise from Keir Starmer as Labour came into power in July 2024. Now it’s finally here, was it worth the wait?

The prime minister pledged to “build on the lessons of our past” and “to put Britain back on track to ending homelessness”.

That was a nod to New Labour’s leadership in the early-2000s, which famously came remarkably close to ending rough sleeping for good.

Starmer took over from a Tory government that had promised to end rough sleeping and failed by some distance. Meanwhile, the number of households in temporary accommodation was skyrocketing.

A long-term cross-government strategy on homelessness was needed to address both of those issues.

Now almost 18 months later, the strategy has finally been published.

It lays out how government departments will work together, along with mayors and councils across England, to reduce homelessness.

The strategy includes pledges to halve long-term rough sleeping by 2029, end people being made homelessness after leaving public institutions and reduce the number of families living in temporary accommodation.

The plan is backed by £3.5 billion over three years.

It pledges to focus on prevention, just as Labour has done over the first 18 months of the party’s time in 10 Downing Street.

So far, in the first 18 months in charge, Labour ministers have spoken of the need to stop people from falling into homelessness in the first place.

Is the strategy to do that worth the wait?

Not quite.

The National Plan to End Homelessness doesn’t set out to live up to its title.

Housing secretary Steve Reed admits as much in his introduction: “We won’t fix the dire situation we inherited overnight.”

The trouble is that focusing on prevention is difficult when homelessness is at crisis point and frontline services and local authorities are at capacity and facing rising demand.

And the strategy doesn’t provide the vision to turn that around to ‘end homelessness’ or at least make it “rare, brief and non-recurrent”.

Many of the key targets in the strategy are pegged to 2029 when the next general election is due to take place and, if polls are to be believed, Labour is facing being booted out of power.

The strategy is an admission that it is going to take a lot longer to end homelessness than three years and that’s perhaps why it should have gone further than sticking to parliamentary cycles.

The response to the strategy has broadly welcomed lots of the initiatives in it.

But notable gaps remain and they undermine the stated goal of ending homelessness.

Balbir Kaur Chatrik, director of policy and prevention at Centrepoint, said: “[These] funding announcements, for example, are significant but don’t face up to the scale of homelessness, just as some of the processes announced build on existing duties but fall short of creating new commitments.

“And, crucially, for a cross-government strategy, there is little reckoning with how homelessness intersects with home-building, health and welfare.

There is no mention of unfreezing local housing allowance which sets housing benefit rates for renters in local areas. The freeze means that benefits do not reflect the bottom 30% of private rented homes as intended and leaves low-income renters struggling to afford a place to live.

Nor is there a significant plan to prevent refugees falling into homelessness or a bold commitment to expand Housing First across England or a guarantee that much-needed social homes will be delivered.

Read more:

• More than 380,000 people will spend Christmas homeless – what does Labour’s strategy mean for them?
• Everything you need to know about Labour’s homelessness strategy
• ‘The only reason I got a place is I was set on fire’: The voices behind Labour’s homelessness plan

“This strategy doesn’t go deep enough into unpicking the systemic factors that leave people facing housing insecurity – nor does it direct enough investment in social housing or programmes like Housing First, which succeed in keeping people permanently housed by looking at all the stubborn, complex issues triggered by a life in extreme poverty,” said Big Issue founder Lord John Bird.

Perhaps the most important function of the strategy is to set direction and lay out a vision for society to move away from manufacturing homelessness and towards a point in the future where it can be eradicated completely.

In that regard, the plan falls short.

Homelessness has stagnated in Labour’s first year and the strategy does promise some inroads can be made going forward.

Now the strategy is out there, it’s up to the government, alongside councils, mayors and homelessness services, to implement it. That’s going to be a hell of a job.

Lord Bird added: “I will support this government every step of the way if it truly commits to prevention, but this means lifting the poverty which is leaving millions teetering on the edge of homelessness, not just moving people through it.”

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