Posted04.09.24
Supported housing is vital in the fight against homelessness, so why don’t we talk about it more?
In 2023 Martin* became homeless. He spent his childhood in the care system and years later, after significant mental health challenges, he faced the prospect of rough sleeping. He was referred to us at Evolve Housing + Support and moved into Eva House, a supported housing service in Croydon, shortly after.
“Guidance on financial matters and other skills should have been part of the care system, but weren’t” says Martin. “When I first moved to Eva House I was anxious, but once you’re here it feels like a community. There’s such a supportive environment. I’ve been joining activities like cooking projects. It feels like a safe space.”
Martin’s story is one of many. Thousands of people stay in supported housing every year, and the majority have been homeless or face immediate risk of it. Supported housing offers secure long-term accommodation alongside wider assistance like emotional wellbeing support and vocational training. Its logic is simple: to move on from homelessness you need the time and space to stop, breathe, recover from your experience, and look ahead. This requires a roof over your head, but also wider professional support like counselling and casework.
By providing this, supported housing sets people up to secure their own independent accommodation and leave homelessness behind for good. However, even though homelessness is on the rise across the UK, public understanding of it remains limited.
One reason for this could be that it occupies a somewhat liminal space. Providers are landlords, but often also charities that offer all kinds of services like therapy and skills training. They provide accommodation, but only to those at immediate risk of homelessness who are referred by local authorities. The results are also slower and less visible than other responses. Once people move into a service, the next step into their own place may take several years – it can be easy to overlook how much work goes on in that time. Such ambiguities can make supported housing difficult to understand at a glance, especially in relation to an urgent issue like homelessness.
However, it is important that this changes. The sector is playing an important and irreplaceable role, but it faces serious challenges.
Firstly, there is the simple problem of numbers. In April the National Housing Federation estimated that 167,000 more supported housing spaces will be needed by 2040, a target that we are not on course to hit. Without these extra places vulnerable people will inevitably end up in temporary housing or low-quality private rental accommodation – neither will offer the support they need, and both increase the risk of a lapse into street homelessness. While there has been movement from the new Labour government to spark homebuilding, little has been said about this specific issue.
Secondly, there is a question about how we work with people who present with more complex emotional wellbeing or physical health needs. Anecdotally, our services report an increase in emotional wellbeing issues among those staying with us, especially since Covid-19. That means extra resources are needed, including in the form of additional staff. At the same time, our resettlement teams are finding it more difficult to find appropriate move on options for these people.
This leads to the third challenge: funding. Supported housing providers usually collect rent paid in the form of housing benefit often transferred straight from local authorities. However, this does not cover the costs of running the additional support programmes that make services so impactful like mental health support, work and learning projects and mentoring. Running costs are increasing, while contracts for service delivery are not reflecting this and do not cover the costs of additional services. If that continues, providers may find they cannot provide all of the holistic help that is needed.
There are no easy answers to these issues. Local authorities must make dwindling budgets go further and further, limiting how much they can invest in supported housing. Alongside that, the rise in mental and physical health needs that we are seeing cannot be easily remedied.
But, one thing we can do immediately is start increasing awareness about the role that supported housing plays in the fight against homelessness.
Last Friday was #StartsAtHomeDay, an awareness initiative designed to do just that. Policymakers and the public can only solve a problem if they can see it, so the more we celebrate supported housing and are honest about the challenges it faces, the more likely we are to see a focus on it that leads to positive change. Everybody can play a role in this by having conversations and sharing digital content.
