Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 11 December 2019.
Yes, it's absolutely plain that one of the root causes of homelessness is the inability of people to access the right kind of social housing, because we haven't been building enough as a result of the Tory caps on the housing revenue accounts, and the way that that system worked, which was absolutely anti the building of social housing. There are also a number of issues around universal credit; the way that the local housing allowance has been capped for four years making people destitute; the rise in high levels of personal debt leading to family breakdown; and domestic violence issues, like Leanne Wood just highlighted, coming out of some of those issues. There are a range of complex issues, all based around poverty and the inability of people to earn enough money to sustain their housing. And the reason for that is because housing costs are very high in the private rented sector and the universal credit just simply doesn't cover them off, and that's absolutely the root cause of that.