Manchester Council have approved a new three-year Homelessness and Rough Sleeping strategy, which covers the period 2024 to 2027
It sets out how the Council will work with the voluntary, community and faith sector plus schools, health services and early help services to tackle this pressing issue.
The strategy identifies four priorities: Increasing prevention, reducing rough sleeping, sourcing more suitable and affordable accommodation and supporting better lives.
It places greater emphasis on the impact of homelessness on children and families and aims to ensure that people in Manchester have the right access to information, advice and support to stop them becoming homeless.
The strategy will be supported by a detailed action plan for the Council and the wider Manchester Homelessness Partnership which is currently being developed and will be launched in the new year.
As well as setting out key priorities for Manchester, the strategy recognises that national government holds the most significant power in reducing the causes of homelessness through legislation, policies and funding and contains a number of asks from the city to Westminster and Whitehall.
These include the immediate unfreezing Local Housing Allowance, rather than waiting until April as currently planned, to enable more people on benefits to afford to rent homes.
Bringing forward the long-promised ban on no fault (Section 21) evictions.
They also want a lifting of the the existing benefit cap and underoccupancy charge, which reduces the maximum amount of rent people can have covered by Universal Credit or housing benefit and to pay Manchester City Council’s Homelessness Prevention Grant in line with the agreed formula. If the Government had funded Manchester’s HPG in line with its published formula, the Council would have had £1.8 million more in 23/24 to tackle the issue.
The strategy also calls on Greater Manchester Combined Authority – which already adds value to the work of the area’s council through schemes such as A Bed Every Night – to help put the cause to Government to increase the Homelessness Prevention Grant and lead a funded programme to help bring long-term empty properties back into residential use.
Council Leader Cllr Bev Craig said: “Our long-term plans, such as our housing strategy which is delivering 10,000 new affordable homes over a decade, our anti-poverty Strategy and the Making Manchester Fairer drive to tackle inequalities are aligned with tackling some of the underlying challenges which contribute to homelessness.
“This new Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy focuses on the more direct support the city will give to people who are facing, or experiencing, homelessness and will build on that wider work.”
