Our thinking

Covid: a chance to end homelessness?

29 October, 2020

This year has not created the best conditions for making progress on important social issues. But, often through necessity, the pandemic has inspired people to think more innovatively and seriously about solutions. Homelessness is one area where there could be hope for a step-change. 

During lockdown, for the first time ever, hotels across the UK opened their doors to accommodate rough sleepers as part of a new government programme called Everyone In. The moment gave the opportunity to collect data and assign everyone a case worker, but the results, and funding, were mixed. The next step of the Everyone In programme, announced yesterday, will make more than 3,300 homes available for rough sleepers by the end of March 2021. 

In Canada, a trial has been running for the last two years to give fifty homeless people a lump sum of CA$7,500 each, no strings attached. Compared against a control group in similar circumstances, those who had received cash were more likely to be in stable accommodation and had reduced spending on harmful substances. Finland’s approach has been different, running a well-funded and system-wide programme called Housing First for the last decade. People are provided with housing on an unconditional basis, and support services help them to address any other problems in their life and find employment. Each homeless person moved to properly supported housing saves the state up to €15,000 a year, and Finland is the only European country wherein homelessness is falling.  

With a wide set of promising precedents and innovative new ideas, perhaps this year could be the moment where our attitudes and approaches change enough to make real progress in tackling homelessness.

By Cara McEvoy