In his short speech before going into Downing Street, Andy Burnham said his first instruction after passing through the door of No. 10 would be to ‘end rough sleeping in our country’. He made a similar promise in 2017 after winning the Greater Manchester mayoralty, when he promised to end rough sleeping in the area by 2020. To do that, he set up the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Homelessness Fund (to which he donated 15 per cent of his salary) and in 2018 promised ‘A Bed Every Night’. That scheme aims to help everyone who is rough sleeping or at risk of doing so, including people with no recourse to public funds, who councils do not legally have to help. Homelessness numbers in Greater Manchester fell, though in 2019 Burnham conceded that he would miss his target – and then the pandemic hit.
The government launched a national version of Burnham’s scheme, ‘Everyone In’, directing councils to do what Burnham had done, and get everyone, regardless of their legal status, into accommodation during the first national lockdown. It provided millions to do that – some £700 million for homelessness and rough sleeping in 2020/21 and £750 million the following year. Rough sleeping numbers across the country, including in Greater Manchester, collapsed. Across the country, an estimated 90 per cent of rough sleepers were given accommodation.
Across England some 37,000 people were helped under Everyone In, and the government said in January 2021 that 26,000 of them had been moved in to longer-term accommodation. But figures from councils collected by Shelter in February 2021 suggested that only 8,600 of them were moved into settled accommodation of more than six months. Almost a quarter were no longer accommodated, another quarter remained in emergency accommodation and a fifth were in supported accommodation, likely to be rooms in hostels. The programme was an off-ramp to nowhere.
The numbers have been climbing since the pandemic. Rough sleeping in England fell to a low of 2,443 in 2021, but has risen to a record 4,793 last autumn. In Greater Manchester, it rose from a low of 90 to 197 – though that is lower than the 268 the year Burnham won the mayoralty. Funding became more fragmented and the lack of supported and settled housing places means rough sleepers remain stuck in temporary accommodation, if they are helped at all. Burnham has announced an extra £340 million as an ‘opening investment’ to acquire 1,200 existing homes and support for 3,000 people. He wants to build more social housing – but that will take time (as the plan to acquire existing homes admits) and housebuilding has been falling. So he might be able to get everyone a bed for a night if he’s willing to spend the money – but it will be tougher to keep them in one.
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