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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:21 pm on 5 February 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:21, 5 February 2019

I'll try and do those in reverse order, just because that's how my memory works. So, in terms of the priority need research, that's due back in April, commissioned by my predecessor Rebecca Evans. We're expecting that back in April.FootnoteLink I know that the new guidance is delayed, but we want to make sure that we've got all of the right collaborations and so on, and we had, obviously, a change of Minister in between as well. So, I will write to the Member and tell him exactly what the plan is, because we've been having some discussion about making sure that we've got the right input from all of our collaborative partners—third sector, local authorities and so on—before we issue the new guidance. And we are working, as I say, to shift to a housing first secure accommodation model, so we are looking to see what the evaluations of the various pilots bring us. Also, as I said in response to Leanne Wood, we are looking to see what the experience elsewhere with housing first models has been.

I didn't say in response to Caroline Jones, but the Finnish model is very interesting, but, of course, people cherry-pick what they like out of models, and one of the things about the Finnish model is that it's one of the most equal societies in the world and is not in its ninth year of austerity, which drives very many of the issues that the Finnish model is able to deal with, whereas we are in a very different position in terms of the stress that many of our families find themselves under, particularly those who are in minimum wage jobs, where the universal credit roll-out is having a severe impact on their ability to maintain their secure accommodation. That's why our legislation is groundbreaking, because we have swapped around to looking at the prevention of people falling out of accommodation. I have very much the ambition to end evictions from any kind of social housing in Wales and that we put the support services in place so that people are not evicted from social housing, because when they are, they become homeless—that is the end of that line. So, we need to work hard with our councils that still have their own housing and with our registered social landlords to make sure that we can maintain people in social rented accommodation, that we can meet their needs and that we ensure that they are in suitable accommodation, because, often, it can be that you're just simply in the wrong place away from your support network and all the rest of it. So, we'll be working very hard to put those matters in place.

We've also got to address the supply side, as he rightly says and the report says, and I've answered various Members about what we're doing on the supply side, but that is, of course, very important: to get the right kind of supply side and the right kind of housing for people so that they have their needs met as part of that secure accommodation. That's absolutely fundamental, and in places like Finland, that is the centre of what they do. Those are things that we're very keen to learn from.