Supporting Homeless People

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 11 December 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:10, 11 December 2019

Yes, I agree with her entirely that domestic abuse is one of the drivers of these kinds of—well, of the need for refuges in the first place, and also of housing instability. There are a whole range of issues that we need to look at to ensure that people are able, for example, to keep hold of their tenancy, so if they are obliged to leave a house in which they would ordinarily have the right to live, then it's not the abuser who ends up staying in the house and the victim isn't driven out. So, there are an enormous number of things—I do agree with you.

One of the things I said in my statement on child poverty yesterday was that we were reviewing a number of systems that we currently have in place to make sure that we don't have people falling in between the cracks, and the area that she's just outlined is one of them. It's not directly in my portfolio, it's actually in the portfolio of the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip, but she and I are working together as part of the gender review and a number of other initiatives to do that, and I'm more than happy to include the Member in those arrangements.