Tackling homelessness: Manchester in focus

Across England and Wales, the picture makes for grim reading, with an estimated 688 homeless deaths in the two countries registered in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This was an 11.6 per cent reduction on the year before, but a 42.7 per cent increase since 2013.

 

In Greater Manchester, at least 33 homeless people died while sleeping rough in 2020, down from 51 deaths in 2019.

 

The ONS said that the figures for the year were affected by the COVID-19-prompted Everyone In scheme, which saw a concerted effort by central and local governments to shelter all rough sleepers during the pandemic.

 

But it was another scheme, A Bed Every Night (ABEN), created by Mr Burnham’s GMCA, that has been credited with improving the picture of homelessness in the city.

 

ABEN, funded by the GMCA in collaboration with the Greater Manchester Mayor’s Charity (GMMC), is the brainchild of Mr Burnham and was launched in 2018.

 

The first phase saw a provision of more than 350 beds from November 2018 until March 2019, at a total cost of £2.66m. The GMMC contributed £300,000 to cover the cost of accommodation for those with no recourse to public funds.

 

The second phase, during the pandemic, saw the GMCA contribute £1.9m, and GMMC put in £1.2m to increase the number of beds to 420 per night, with 1,654 individuals accommodated during this phase.

 

Embassy Village

 

Another scheme that has emerged out of the GMMC is Embassy Village, a project that will create 40 permanent homes for homeless people on a site in the heart of Manchester’s wealthier central areas. The scheme also aims to support residents into work.

 

One person behind the project is property developer Tim Heatley, co-founder of multimillion-pound developer Capital and Centric, who is also the chair of the GMMC.

 

Mr Heatley says the two met when Mr Burnham assumed the office of Greater Manchester mayor and asked housing figures whether they had assets, or money, to help combat homelessness.

 

“You’d think with all the ingenuity, the brilliant minds and businesses that are in the city that we would have been able to collectively come together and make a big dent in rough sleeping if we can just collaborate,” Mr Heatley tells Social Housing.

 

“Against a very challenging backdrop, in terms of rough sleeping in the city centre, we’re now below 100 [people per night]. We’re now seeing 60, 70, 80”

 

Now the mayor’s charity receives around 90 per cent of its donations from corporations.

 

Mr Heatley adds: “You judge a city by how [it] treats its most disadvantaged people. And we need, as a city region, to attract the most talented, young individuals to study here, attract the best businesses to be based here, to pay the best salaries – and therefore as a city region that wealth grows.

 

“Greater Manchester has been incredibly successful at that and so there are two challenges there – how that growth plays into providing affordable homes for a growing city region and how those people who are most disadvantaged access that growth and wealth creation, and I think that that was what was missing for a long time. 

 

“Against a very challenging backdrop, in terms of rough sleeping in the city centre, we’re now below 100 [people per night]. We’re now seeing 60, 70, 80. We’re talking about names of the people rather than numbers and that’s important.”

Unlike Embassy Village, ABEN does not rely on charity support and the GMCA has awarded funding to its 10 councils to provide beds for homeless people.

 

Manchester City Council received £1.76m in funding from the GMCA for its ABEN scheme in 2021-22. 

 

However, Manchester City Council, like many local authorities up and down the country, needs to make cuts. The local authority has estimated that overall cuts will be in the region of £50m, with the homelessness directorate axing £2.34m in 2021-22.

 

Meanwhile, Manchester City Council has spent £5.6m to provide accommodation for those sleeping rough in response to the Everyone In scheme, as rough sleepers are moved out of temporary hotel accommodation and into more permanent accommodation in an attempt to ensure residents do not return to the streets. 

 

During the pandemic, the council worked with the GMCA and the voluntary sector to secure 12 separate venues with 372 bed spaces.

 

“Homelessness is not one problem that can be solved, it is a complex network of issues and interdependencies with other services”

 

Luthfur Rahman, deputy leader of Manchester City Council, tells Social Housing: “Homelessness is not one problem that can be solved, it is a complex network of issues and interdependencies with other services – including mental health services, drug and alcohol services, children’s services, adult social care services, Universal Credit, Local Housing Allowance rates, funding for housebuilding and wider welfare decisions. 

 

“There are circa 3,300 homeless households in Manchester. We expect this to drop slightly by next year because, although presentations of homelessness are expected to continue to rise, investment has been made in a private rental sector team who are helping to prevent people from becoming homeless. 

 

“Manchester is now surpassing its target for affordable homes delivery across a range of tenures and is on course to deliver more than 7,400 accessible homes between 2015 and 2025. The previous target was at least 6,400
in this period.

 

“The council has also announced a new homebuilding company – This City – which will eventually build 500 homes a year, many of which will be priced at or below the Local Housing Allowance level to increase the number of homes to residents. The first sites in the city centre will be announced in early 2022.” 

 

Housing First

 

Greater Manchester is one of the areas in England that has trialled the pilot scheme for Housing First.

 

Launched in April 2019, the scheme aims over three years to rehouse and provide wraparound support for more than 300 people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless across all 10 Greater Manchester boroughs.

In December (2021), Greater Manchester Housing First announced that it had hit the target of housing 300 people. One of the organisations it works with is Riverside Housing Association.

 

John Glenton, executive director of care and support at Riverside, says the improving picture on homelessness figures in Manchester comes from a “political will” from the top of the GMCA and an implementation of new projects such as ABEN, Everyone In and Housing First.

 

Riverside has embarked on projects to provide a range of accommodation for Manchester’s homeless community and says it has worked with 896 people affected by homelessness.

 

The housing association has a ‘rough sleeper pathway’, which is 70 units of accommodation. This is made up of rooms with a bathroom in a supported housing scheme, flats within a supported housing scheme, or flats within the community.

There is also a focus on the diversity of provision, with LGBTQ+ accommodation, men and women’s accommodation, accommodation for those with addictions and accommodation for domestic violence survivors. Within that is the idea of preventing homelessness from striking again, in the shape of wraparound care.

 

Mr Glenton says: “Some housing associations have been criticised for not housing people at risk of homelessness or not supporting people sufficiently and we wanted to be really clear that we wanted to make sure that our allocations and letting policies were fit for purpose and people [who] really needed our housing could access it. 

 

“But we also wanted to be really clear that we would support people when they moved in to get furniture, claim benefits, [and help them] back into employment, giving them the best chance to make it work.

 

“Homelessness costs money through other services if left unchecked, such as social care, health services and the criminal justice system, so most local authorities commission providers such as Riverside to provide the accommodation and support services needed for people who find themselves homeless so that they don’t have to sleep on the street.” 

 

Social enterprises

 

Outside of the traditional charity and local authority routes to tackling homelessness are social enterprises and fund managers such as Resonance, which have attracted funding nationally for social projects for more than 20 years.

 

Since December 2020, Resonance has raised £20m for Greater Manchester and expects to find a further £80m by this time next year to purchase affordable housing for the region’s homeless people, and then elsewhere in England, through its National Homelessness Property 2 fund.

 

Through the fund, Resonance acquires and refurbishes properties, leasing them to the social housing sector and homelessness charities. Resonance targets individual homes to refurbish, to maintain its idea of “ordinary homes and ordinary streets” for homeless people to move into and establish a broader community.

 

“Typically the target internal rate of return total for a fund, or a life of a fund, is six per cent-plus”

 

The rent is usually paid through housing benefit and offers a “sensible return” to investors, Resonance says.

 

John Williams, managing director of property funds at Resonance, says: “We raise our capital into these funds usually from three groups of organisations. One is foundations or trusts that invest. The second group is probably local councils that like to invest and the third is more institutional investors, like pension funds. The minimum investment is normally £1m from a foundation that might have £50m, or a pension [fund] has a few billion and they invest £30m or £40m. It’s the bigger kind of investments we’re looking for.

 

“Typically the target internal rate of return total for a fund, or a life of a fund, is six per cent-plus. The reason those groups invest really is for a safe, stable, solid yield, which is long term because the income is backed by government housing benefit and it flows through a housing provider which has a track record of housing tenants and has the ability to pay guaranteed rents.”

 

Manchester City Council’s homelessness rates remain perilously high. But progress made through a mixture of charitable arms, political willingness and innovative funding mechanisms across the Greater Manchester region may present a template that can be replicated nationally, at least for other large cities facing comparable rates of rough sleeping and homelessness.