3. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Homelessness and Rough-sleeping

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 5 February 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:07, 5 February 2019

So, starting with that one, we are actively pursuing any legislative opportunity that would arise in order for us to deal with the section 21 issues. I'm not actually in a position to say what that is but we are very actively pursuing the various options that are available to us, within the legislative programme, to be able to address some of those issues.

We're also, as you heard me saying in response to other questions, looking to have a very serious mass social housing build policy, and we're looking to work with local authorities as fast as possible to free up public land in order to be able to do that. We're working very hard—Rebecca Evans and I are working very hard to make sure that the cap arrangements for the housing revenue account are removed from every authority that currently has one. I think we've got four left to go, but anyway it's not very many more to go. We're very much encouraging local authorities to step up to that plate and use their prudential borrowing powers in order to start the build for houses for social rent.

We're also, of course, pursuing our affordable homes policy, which—we're confident that we will get to our 20,000 affordable homes. But that's not the only solution that's needed, as Jenny Rathbone rightly says. We have a very bad housing shortage and that is driving some of the homelessness. But also we have a rising tide of poverty driven by austerity, which is also contributing to the family breakdown, stress and so on that she very ably outlined, I think. 

So, I go back to saying we need to learn from those very good authorities that have got excellent programmes. We need to spread the best practice across Wales. And I would like to finish by saying what I did say in my statement: to express the Government's very enormous gratitude to all of the people who work in this sector—the third sector, the local authorities, the volunteers and so on—without whom we would have had very many more deaths on the streets.