2. Will the First Minister outline the actions the Welsh Government is taking to tackle homelessness in South Wales? OAQ(5)0225(FM)

The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 ensures everyone who is homeless or at risk of becoming homeless gets the help they need. Statistics show homelessness was successfully prevented last year for 65 per cent of all households threatened with homelessness.

Thank you, First Minister. Councils across Wales are targeting the homeless and seeking to ban rough sleeping, yet these same councils are doing very little to secure accommodation for those individuals who find themselves with no choice other than to sleep rough. Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council and South Wales Police have started a clampdown on anti-social behaviour and under this guise are targeting rough sleepers in Neath town centre under Operation Avalanche. However, Neath Port Talbot Council have not opened any additional homeless shelters or increased the availability of social housing. First Minister, what can the Welsh Government do to prevent local authorities from victimising the most vulnerable in our society, and instead concentrate upon eradicating homelessness, looking at the causal factors of each homeless person? Will the Welsh Government ensure there is sufficient social housing stock and encourage local authorities to convert some of the many empty properties they own to provide emergency accommodation for homelessness until an individual—

The statements are tomorrow.

I’m not a clairvoyant. And solutions as the main objective—

Can you come to your question please?

Sorry, yes. Instead of people opposing homelessness and putting people in prison for vagrancy, can we please look at a plan to help the homeless?

Well, I do oppose homelessness. Vagrancy hasn’t been a crime for a while. We’re not branding people anymore, as was the case many years ago. But the point is this: prevention is the key here, and the fact that 65 per cent of all households threatened with homelessness were helped before they became homeless is important. It’s hugely important to have social housing. That’s why, of course, we have a target of 20,000 homes to be built in the course of this Government and, of course, why we are ending the right to buy—there’s no point trying to fill the bath up with the plug out. So, we know that there’ll be much more housing available in the future for people, trying to deal with the damage that was created in the 1980s, as houses were sold and not replaced. And, of course, we want to make sure that local authorities use the Supporting People programme and the homelessness prevention grant in order to make sure that people who become homeless are helped, rather than the homelessness problem that was very much created by the Tories in the 1980s.

First Minister, the Member for South Wales West was quite right to point out the number of empty or unavailable homes at the moment—over 20,000. That’s actually more than your target for affordable housing in the whole of this fifth Assembly term. It does seem to me that there are lots of people there who are not only in danger of homelessness, but have not been able to form their own household and are having to stay in accommodation they’d rather leave. One way of tackling this, in part, would be to look at those homes that are not currently in use.

We have a successful record on that. If memory serves, some 6,000 homes have been brought back into use through the empty homes initiative. And the Member’s quite right to say that, whilst there are houses that are empty and people who need homes, then that situation needs to be rectified. And the fact that so many thousands of homes have been brought back into use is a sign of that.

First Minister, analysis by Shelter Cymru states that there are major differences between local authorities in the context of the targets that they have in terms of avoiding homelessness. For example, the most successful is Gwynedd, where 84.6 per cent of people are assisted before they become homeless, whereas in Merthyr it’s 44.4 per cent, which is the worst in Wales. So, what are you as a Government going to do to ensure that local authorities can collaborate and assist each other in this context so that this isn’t such a problem in Wales?

Well, consistency is important—that much is true. Of course, we want to see local authorities working together so that we can see the best practice possible in this situation. There is no doubt that the legislation has made a great different in ensuring that fewer people are facing homelessness, and in ensuring that they are not in a position where they lose the roof over their heads in the first place.