Rough sleeping across Greater Manchester’s ten Boroughs has dropped by 37 per cent in the last twelve months.
The figures, taken from the rough sleeper count that took place in November 2019, showed that the number of people sleeping rough has fallen from 241 in November 2018 to 151.
They were announced earlier today by Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham who attributed much of the fall to ABed Every Night, a scheme introduced by the Mayor which provides a bed and personal support on an emergency basis to people sleeping rough who don’t qualify for statutory provision.
The scheme has supported nearly 3000 people with 30% moving into more secure accommodation.
In the last month alone, 502 individuals accessed the scheme with 44% achieving a positive move into more secure accommodation.
The scheme is entirely funded by local partners
Burnham acknowledged that people coming into Manchester during the day may not necessarily see the improvements recognising that many of those in the City Centre are not homeless but begging.These people he added have other problems such as mental health and addiction issues.
Since devolution in Greater Manchester in 2017 and various initiatives to tackle rough sleeping, the number of people sleeping rough has dropped 44% in two years, after increasing nearly every year since 2010.
In England as a total, the number of people sleeping rough increased 269% between 2010-2017 before falling by 1.5% in 2018.
he Mayor has also repeated his call on the Prime Minister to take immediate action to end the humanitarian crisis of people sleeping rough. At the start of the winter general election campaign, the Mayor wrote to all the main party leaders setting out what action they could take straight away if they became Prime Minister to tackle rough sleeping.
Now is the time for action and the Mayor wants to see Prime Minister Boris Johnson take immediate steps, including releasing the extra £54m for sleeping rough announced in the last Parliament to towns and cities now.
Greater Manchester will use the money to help even more people sleeping rough through the A Bed Every Night scheme now and into 2020.
His also called in the government to end
the freeze on the Local Housing Allowance with immediate effect and ensure it keeps pace with the increase in local rents and the ending of no-fault evictions and announce this in the forthcoming Queen’s Speech.
Andy Burnham, said:
“We still have much further to go on our mission to end the situation of people sleeping rough in Greater Manchester but this is real progress. It has been achieved by the hard work of hundreds of caring people in our councils, charities and faith communities and the generosity of the Greater Manchester public. It shows the power of this place when we work as one.
“But we now need much more help from the Government. We need an end to policies which are forcing people onto the streets – such as the freeze on local housing allowance – and more support to extend schemes like A Bed Every Night right across the country. A policy of ending rough sleeping by 2027 is simply not good enough. People are dying on British streets now for want of a home and Greater Manchester is proving that, with urgent action, lives can be saved this winter.”
