Why early intervention is the key to ending homelessness

I know I’m singing to the choir when I say that those who blame homeless people for their predicament should try talking to them. In my student days, I volunteered as one of the launch team for the Big Issue in Bath because I wanted to be part of the solution. I wanted to be a journalist and here was an opportunity to both campaign on social justice and help create the means for people to scrape together a living and help themselves off the streets.

It wasn’t long before this was my job. I was no longer just talking to people in the abstract about all that was wrong with the world but to the people let down by it. The first time a magazine vendor told me about the abuse he endured as a child was a watershed moment. So too was the time one of them talked me through the PTSD he experienced, alongside the facial scar, from serving in the Falklands. As was the suicide of a vendor after being ‘exposed’ for claiming benefits, one hundred percent legitimately, and blazoned across the front page of the Bristol Evening Post.

I was only in my mid-twenties. It was a lot to take on. I was impressionable enough to absorb the stories but earnest enough to file them under ‘useful background’ for the campaigning work I was just breaking into. I was also healthily cynical and knew a play when I saw one. They didn’t want my sympathy, but a handful of free magazines would have been welcome.

It doesn’t start with the eviction notice

When we talk about preventing homelessness, there’s more to it than jumping to action when an eviction notice lands on someone’s doormat. By the time they’re in the whirling vortex of the plug hole, it’s too late. The tenant is holding their breath and just thinking about keeping their heads above water. They are in a poor position to do much for themselves and any solutions are largely done around them.

One concept that is taking hold is how we might prevent homelessness ‘upstream’. I saw Professor Peter Mackie speak at a conference a few years ago on this. His conclusion was simple: if we want to end homelessness, we need to stop people becoming destitute. There are other triggers too, but if people had the means, they would probably not choose homelessness.

The same day, I was talking about Clean Slate’s money health-check process. ‘We know the groups that are most at risk of homelessness,’ I said. ‘What if we could reach them while the wheels are wobbling, but before they come off?’ I walked people through our digital toolkit, which had recently been utilised during the pandemic by licensees across the UK to help people get through financially. Thirty-five people signed up for further information that day.

Not a single one took us up on the offer. The problem? They were from homelessness organisations. And they don’t work with people until they’re homeless. And the groups that do work with people at risk, are not in business to tackle homelessness.

What if we stepped in sooner?

Although Clean Slate works nationwide, I’ve been back in Bath to set up an upstream homelessness prevention programme. We can’t intervene at childhood or on the battlefield, but we do know which groups to focus on and how to spot when the financial road is just starting to get bumpy. Targeting people in mental health services, leaving the forces, care or prisons, or in households struggling to stay together.

Housing precarity is also a red flag identifying people at risk of homelessness. Using insights from sources like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Shelter, our working hypothesis is that housing below 35 per cent of someone’s net income should be sustainable. Anything more than 40 per cent is not affordable.

Bath has a particularly acute problem with affordable housing. A world heritage city, with huge visitor numbers and two universities, affordable largely means social housing and, as in many other places, that’s in short supply. There may be cheaper accommodation in North East Somerset, although transport options to the city to access many support services, the job centre and job vacancies are poor and parking is expensive.

Other options then are to increase income and income-max-as-usual won’t cut it. I have long rejected the idea that a life on benefits is good enough for people in recovery from homelessness. It’s why we’re Clean Slate Training & Employment. For those who can, (and that’s more than many support agencies and homeless people themselves realise), work is a critical element of re-establishing independence and control over their lives. It creates social connection and a sense of purpose. With government plans to turn the screw on people on incapacity benefits who are in any way able to work, the wheels are about to come off strategies that park homeless people on them just to satisfy their landlords.

With millions now clogging up temporary accommodation and supported housing across the UK, there is a scandal about to break. Homelessness prevention needs to be re-imagined, and it’ll be no good blaming the people we failed to help once they started circling the plug hole.

Image: Lovelyday12 / Shutterstock