7. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Tackling Homelessness

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:54 pm on 23 October 2019.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 5:54, 23 October 2019

Okay, well, I'll come on to that in a little bit, but as you remember—I think you heard from my colleague Angela Burns not so very long ago about some of the views we hold on universal credit, the timing of it and some concerns regarding the five-week delay at the beginning of it. But, of course, this is not devolved and there's only a certain amount of work that we can do on that directly ourselves.

Can I just go back to where I started, about this issue of legislation and the problem of homelessness? Because if we are going to be introducing a statutory right to this, I personally don't have much patience with statute being used for symbolic gestures, and if the Minister can be persuaded to go down this route—which I hope she will, actually—that she will urge considering the mechanisms for enforcing any rights and offering remedies for failure.

I think a post-legislative review of the Act would be very welcome now. We agree, as you heard, with Housing First prioritising the finding of accommodation, but I'm not 100 per cent sure that the wraparound support is following, and I hope that you will note our commitment to the Supporting People funding.

Minister—I think I've raised this with you before—vulnerable people from Neath Port Talbot have recently been housed in Swansea, and both the police and residents have told me that that does not come without its problems. The city already has its county lines and drug problems, including cuckooing, and this is in the social as well as the private rented sector.

It's not the focus of this motion, but I think the private rented sector can and should contribute to relieving homelessness. We may need 40,000 new social sector homes, but that would take 10 years, even under a Welsh Conservative Government, so I think the private sector should also be an active agent of providing good-quality housing as well as being good partners. In Swansea, the Wallich and Dawsons estate agents have helped clients who had experienced homelessness find sustainable accommodation by offering guarantees instead of cash bonds to landlords, together with support through benefit delays and rent arrears, for example.

It's worth mentioning that insecure tenure is not the main driver of people leaving private rented accommodation. Most tenancies are ended by the tenant, but, even so, when the landlord ends the tenancy, the main reason is rent arrears, and changes in the benefit system are often behind that. I'm not trying to avoid that, as I hope I've made plain, but, if we say this is just about benefits, or even low pay, we lose sight of the drink and drugs misuse and the mental health problems of so many who, without those challenges, Leanne, would be better able to manage their finances, however difficult. We lose sight of those in flight from violence, from being thrown out of their family home, those going missing from care, and even something, as we heard from Jack Sergeant, as simple, but as personally devastating, as not being able to keep your pet with you.

And so I turn to point 6 of our action plan, education. Welsh Government was wrong not to support Bethan Sayed's backbench Bill on financial inclusion. As I'm sure we'll hear more of in this debate, homelessness isn't always what we think it is, and it could happen to anyone. Managing money and developing resilience against shock are things we learn, and that is as much about personal experience and mental health as it is about intelligence or comparative poverty. There is space for this in the new curriculum areas of learning and experience. Homelessness exists everywhere, as Neil has said, and there will be no shortage of Cynefin material to provide this localised content. In fact, Swansea council has already committed to developing an education programme with young people, co-produced, to improve their homelessness prevention.

So, data collection—if you'll allow me this, Deputy Presiding Officer—this is not just about homelessness, I think. What is it that is useful to collect by way of data? Let's just take the settled BME community as one example. Once over-represented in social housing applications, it's now the opposite. And I'm not talking about refugees and asylum seekers here, but families established in Wales, Welsh families whose homelessness risk factors are familiar—relationship breakdown, unmet support needs, lack of independent living—but there can be additional factors such as overcrowding, being housed in an area where you face racist abuse or discrimination, where there are no other residents who speak your home language, you may be too far from your place of worship, your support system, and where lack of visibility of housing support will drive you towards low-quality private housing, so you don't appear in the housing statistics.

Finally, Swansea Homeless Sanctuary faces closure because it's £900 in the red: such a small amount for something that can make such a big difference, and the same applies to Supporting People funding. Please keep it and ring-fence it for three years, Minister, or we will be asking the people of Wales to ask us to do it. Thank you.