Lauren Caley
On Wednesday 9th July, people with lived experience of the housing emergency joined staff from Shelter Cymru and the Bevan Foundation to deliver an open letter to the First Minister, Eluned Morgan. The letter, signed by over 1,000 people, calls for determined action to drive down the number of people stuck living in temporary accommodation.
The delivery of the letter received cross-party support with Senedd Members joining us from Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats. We’d like to share a heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined us on the day – particularly the people with personal experiences who came to represent the thousands of others impacted by the housing emergency in Wales.
Right now, nearly 11,000 people are homeless and living in temporary accommodation In Wales – 2,500 of them are children. Over the course of this Senedd term, the number of households stuck living in temporary accommodation has almost doubled and the figures have stayed persistently high in the last few years.
One in four people are living in B&Bs and hotels – in some cases whole families are having to share a room with only one bed and nowhere for them to cook, wash their clothes or focus on work or homework.
There’s a range of factors that have created this huge growth in demand for temporary accommodation. From more inclusive policies in Wales increasing the visibility of some forms of hidden homelessness to the cost of living crisis, rapidly increasing private rents, and failings in our welfare system all acting as drivers of homelessness.
The open letter calls for action in tow key areas:
1. Increase the number of social homes in Wales to provide people trapped in temporary accommodation with a safe and suitable move on option
2. Set out and suitably fund a whole society response to prevention that includes all public sector services that people interact with regularly – GPs, schools, community spaces, etc.
The letter is addressed to our First Minister in recognition that we will only see the end of our reliance on temporary accommodation if ending the housing emergency is a key cross-governmental priority. Shelter Cymru have welcomed many of the steps that the Welsh Government have and are continuing to take, including increasing investment in social homes and reforming homelessness legislation. But to achieve real and lasting change we need to go further.
With 94,000 households currently waiting for a social home, we need to see delivery of social homes that shows the ambition across the UK following the second world war. In the 1950s and 1960s, we built 175,000 social homes in Wales for people who needed them – around 9,000 homes a year. Investment at the highest levels recorded since devolution in Wales is a step in the right direction but isn’t a sufficient response to the housing emergency that we’re living through.
Similarly, we continue to celebrate the greater focus on preventing homelessness that was brought about with the 2014 Housing (Wales) Act which will be strengthened dramatically when the elements of the proposed Homelessness and Social Housing Bill come into force. But this hasn’t yet translated to the level of successful prevention that we had all hoped to see and Shelter Cymru are concerned that, without additional investment, local authorities will face huge challenges trying to realise the much needed and more robust prevention approach due to come in.
The proposed Bill recognises and reinforces that preventing homelessness can’t only be a priority for the housing sector but should be a shared mission across the public sector and associated teams in Wales. We know that preventing homelessness improves health and wider quality of life outcomes for people – that also means that preventing homelessness can free up funding and capacity in our other public services, particularly our stretch NHS.
Thank you again to everyone who took the time to support this open letter. We took your voices directly to the Senedd and made sure that your calls for change were heard.
