A 24-hour, 365-day homeless assessment hub to prevent rough sleeping has recently launched in Croydon University Hospital.
The Conservative Government-funded project is run by Croydon Council and specialist provider Evolve. It offers up to 15 people a bed for up to 72 hours and a same-day assessment of their financial, health and housing circumstances.
Rough sleepers, or people about to sleep rough, are being referred to the hub by the council’s homelessness assessment team and partners including Croydon Reach and Crisis. They then receive help into settled accommodation and one-to-one help with their finances and job skills.
The assessment hub includes shared sleeping quarters, female-only shared bedrooms, a private room, a kitchen and a medical room.
Croydon Council was granted £622,000 from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to run the hub, which opened on 5th November.
The council and partners already provide wider support for rough sleepers, from accommodation for single homeless people to the Croydon Churches Floating Shelter and an emergency winter shelter hosted by Crystal Palace Football Club.
What else is the Government doing to eradicate homelessness?
The Government has pledged to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027 and halve it by 2022.
This additional funding for Croydon Council forms part of the Conservative Government’s £100 million plan to end rough sleeping by 2027. Progress is already being made with the first fall in rough sleeping since 2010 and falls of almost 20 per cent in the worse-affected area. Schemes like this will help us achieve our ambition of being a country in which no-one needs to spend a night on the streets.
- We are cutting the number of rough sleepers by 19 per cent in areas using our Rough Sleeping Initiative. The programme is working in the 83 areas of the country with the highest levels of rough sleepers to respond to the health needs of people who sleep rough and provide services in place quickly to get people off the streets before the winter period (MHCLG, Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2018, England (Revised), 25 February 2019, link ; MHCLG, Rough Sleeping Strategy, August 2018, link ).
- The number of counted or estimated rough sleepers in England has fallen by 2 per cent since 2017. This was down by 74 people or 2 per cent from the 2017 total of 4,751, and was up 2,909 people or 165 per cent from the 2010 total of 1,768 (MHCLG, Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2018, England, 31 January 2019, link ).
- We are launching 11 rough sleeping hubs across England to provide specialist support for thousands of vulnerable people. 11 rough sleeping hubs to be launched across England – providing specialist support for thousands of vulnerable people with locations including Bristol, Derby and West London (MHCLG, Press release, 18 December 2018, link ).
- The number of rough sleepers has decreased in England, but increased in Sadiq Khan’s London since 2017. The number of people sleeping rough decreased by 220 or 6 per cent in the rest of England but increased by 146 or 13 per cent in London since 2017 (MHCLG, Rough Sleeping Statistics Autumn 2018, England, 31 January 2019, link ).
- Housing charity Shelter has warned that Labour’s housing policy could push people into homelessness. Labour’s rent control policy ‘risks pushing people into homelessness’ (Shelter, 27 September 2017, link ).
We have to do more. We will do more – if elected with a Conservative Majority Government on 12th December.
Photo by Anjana Menon on Unsplash
