Face of Nation International : Councils have been given 48 hours to find emergency accommodation for all rough sleepers in England following an unprecedented, but unfunded, request from the government that all homeless people should be housed by Sunday.
Council officials welcomed the urgency of the request but expressed concern about the difficulty of the task, given the already acute accommodation shortages. These shortages worsened this week after a parallel government instruction to hotels to close. The Local Government Association (LGA) said councils would need extra funding if they were to meet the deadline. “These are unusual times, so I’m asking for an unusual effort,” an email from Louise Casey, who was appointed last week to lead the government’s response to Covid-19 and rough sleeping, read. “As you know, this is a public health emergency.” Casey, who also worked as Tony Blair’s homelessness tsar, said it was vital that night shelters and all street encampments be closed down, to stop the spread of the disease.
Later Luke Hall, the junior housing minister, wrote a letter to the leader of every local authority in England asking them to house all people sleeping rough and to find alternative accommodation for people in hostels and night shelters by the end of the weekend, in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
“It is now imperative that rough sleepers and other vulnerable homeless are supported into appropriate accommodation by the end of the week,” he wrote. He went on to instruct each local authority to set up a Covid-19 rough sleeping “coordination cell” and highlighted the importance of stopping homeless people from congregating in day-centre facilities to reduce the risk of transmission. There was no new funding for this request, but Hall referred council leaders to an earlier announcement of £1.6bn for local authorities’ Covid-19 response.
In a significant departure from normal rules, he also stressed that people classified as having “no recourse to public funds” (a status given to people who are seeking asylum, or who have a limited immigration status), who normally have no right to housing support or benefits, should also be helped with emergency accommodation. But it was not clear how councils would fund this provision. The letter simply instructed them to “utilise alternative powers and funding to assist those with no recourse to public funds who require shelter and other forms of support due to the Covid-19 pandemic”. (Source: The Guardian News – UK)
