Britain fixed homelessness during lockdown – briefly. Can it do it again?

Julian had lived a “normal life” as a laborer, living with his grandmother in affordable public housing in North London. When she died last December, Julian was left out on the streets in the middle of a pandemic. Now, a year later, he remains without a home as winter’s freezing temperatures begin to set in.

With an estimated 280,000 people homeless in England – many of them sleeping outdoors, or “rough” as it is called here – he’s not alone.

But a glimmer of hope emerged after 2020 showed a decline in the number of rough sleepers dying in the streets – the first such drop in almost a decade. The fall is attributed to a rare, albeit brief, pandemic success story, when the British government made a concerted effort to house thousands of rough sleepers inside emergency accommodations at the onset of lockdown in March 2020.

Britain’s brief foray tackling homelessness has raised questions about whether that spark to protect homeless people can return. Protections are now lapsing, with a ban on evictions during the pandemic and the “Everyone In” program now gone.

The minds of charities and policymakers are now focused on whether the short-lived success can be replicated, and whether a change in the philosophy of letting homeless people into housing is needed.

“It boils down to an unconditional versus a traditional tough-love approach,” the latter a characteristic of multiple governments, says Ruth Mason, a frontline homeless shelter worker already “stretched to the limit.”

The success of “Everyone In”

When Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown in March 2020, local authorities had been given just 48 hours to house all rough sleepers as part of the Everyone In program. It was a “landmark moment and the right thing to do,” says Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the homeless charity Crisis. Around 37,000 people were housed in emergency accommodations.

That request was made without a clear plan or much financial backing for local authorities. So many local councils turned to hoteliers to find the rooms needed.

In Shrewsbury in western England, the Prince Rupert Hotel agreed to take in all the town’s homeless people. “The council literally walked them, with their rucksack from their natural habitat of a doorway or a park bench, into the hotel that they’d only walked past for years,” says Mike Matthews, owner of the Tudor-style hotel.

Many hoteliers, like Mr. Matthews, cooked meals for the new arrivals in kitchens that normally fed paying guests. One hotel in London overlooking the capital’s river filled up all the rooms usually given to high-paying tourists.

“So many of the rough sleepers had never been in such a comfortable bed,” says a manager at the popular hotel chain Travelodge. Hotel staff stayed on while the country mostly shut down, collaborating with rough-sleeping charities round the clock. “The Everyone In scheme was a real success. ... For a few months in the first lockdown, the government showed that where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

The government had also moved to suspend all evictions during the pandemic, thereby halting one of the main mechanisms that ends up putting more people on the streets. The ban “brought welcome relief and gave time to decide what protections could be put in place,” says Ruth Ehrlich, policy adviser at the U.K. charity Shelter.

The effort paid off, at least in saving lives. According to the Office for National Statistics’ figures for 2020, released this month, last year saw the first drop in the number of deaths of homeless people in England and Wales since 2014. The number of deaths had been increasing steadily from 2014 to 2019 (going from about 500 to 778), but 2020 saw a drop to 688.

Time for a shift in thought?

But Everyone In did not continue, nor did the eviction ban. While a majority of the 37,000-plus people housed were moved on to more settled accommodations, according to a House of Commons report earlier this year, many remained in emergency housing. And as the evictions ban ended, the number of repossessions spiked – driving people onto the streets once again.

Repeating the Everyone In initiative isn’t easily done. Though it made a commitment in its 2019 manifesto to end rough sleeping by 2024, the Conservative government has yet to provide a clear, long-term plan to that end. Charities warn that more investment in housing and support work is necessary to replicate last year’s results over years, rather than as a monthslong stopgap. National charity Crisis argues the solution is in more specialist support and housing that is more suitable for long-term living, as opposed to hotel rooms, which are once again being used by tourists.

Crisis also calls for housing to be provided unconditionally, a marked change from traditional policy around granting shelter to those in need.

Ms. Mason, the homeless shelter worker, operates under the traditional approach when she assesses the health and well-being of rough sleepers, making sure they’re off drugs and alcohol before declaring them “fit” for temporary accommodation. The logic is that otherwise, “rough sleepers go to hostels, but fall into a trap because they’re surrounded by other rough sleepers with alcohol or drug dependency,” she explains, and they will then flee back onto the streets to avoid such conditions.

But under Everyone In, those requirements for shelter were waived, which enabled the sweeping action needed. She wonders whether that change in direction, to provide housing “free of judgment,” might make more sense now. “How else can people overcome their troubles, without a roof over their heads first?”

Some housing charities are already taking that approach. Housing First is one such model that provides rough sleepers with their own homes unconditionally, and was first pioneered at a national level in Finland before being launched in the United Kingdom, where it is lauded by many.

But the debate is still far from resolved, and after years of the traditional approach, change may come slowly. In Manchester, plans are underway to build the U.K.’s largest village for homeless people. Derelict railway arches idly sitting by the Bridgewater Canal in Manchester will be converted to house small, modular apartments for 40 men. Embassy Village, as it will be called, will follow the traditional approach, though, and require residents to have no alcohol or drug addictions before they are housed.

On the streets of London, Julian huddles next to another rough sleeper and takes coffee from passersby. His future remains uncertain, but he knows that a roof over his head is what he needs to kick-start his life.

He knows more than most that rough sleeping can happen to anyone. “You’re no more than two steps away from sleeping on the streets.”