Together Making Homelessness History

When the outbreak first reached our city, the outlook looked bleak for our guests staying at the Wolverhampton Church Shelter. We were ill-equipped to deal with issues around social distancing and not set up to operate within such a context. When the government announced that rough sleepers should be moved into hotels, at first, we were dubious as to how that would work. We had previously explored similar concepts, but they did not appear to stack up and did not pass the risk assessments. We assessed the risk based on looking at whether we could feasibly make it work in a manageable way, but the answer seemed to be no.

Over the course of a manic few days, the council along with other partners from the city pulled together a new service provision for rough sleepers in a hotel that should have taken 12 months of planning and preparation. We had no choice. The issue was not whether we should do it or but how to make it work under the circumstances. The threat of Coronavirus was a bigger threat than anything else and so that had to drive the agenda.

8 weeks later, the outcomes speak for themselves: More people have been moved on from the hotel into longer term accommodation than the number of rooms in the hotel itself. Long-term entrenched rough sleepers have come in off the streets, gotten used to being in accommodation again and started to hope and engage in a way that they have never done before. Daniel’s story emphasises this so well:

In and amongst all of this chaos we have come to a realisation that the way we did things in the past has to change. There is an operational factor. Night Shelters are not well placed for practicing social distancing and unlikely to be operationally viable moving forwards. But that is not our primary motivation. The issue for us is one of an absolute moral obligation. What has been achieved in Wolverhampton through incredible partnership and collaborations is nothing short of impossible. We did not believe that this could be done and yet we have done it anyway. Now that we know this, owe it to ourselves and to those we serve to move forwards and not go back to the old ways. There has to be a new normal for homelessness provision where the learning of the last 8 weeks is driven back into the collaborations and partnerships.

We do not know exactly what this will look like yet, but it has to build on our experience and learning from the context we have been operating in during lockdown.

Crisis set out a 10 year plan (https://urlzs.com/BKfDk) for what it would take to end homelessness for good.

COVID19 has turned things on their head. Rough sleeping was almost brought to an end overnight with the political will and money that it needed. Now we need to make sure that things stay this way. Homeless Link have published their plan to make sure Everyone stays in for good (https://urlzs.com/V6qhq) and this is within our grasp. Things have accelerated over the last 8 weeks in such a way that we now have a moment in time where anything and everything is possible. Now is the time to join a movement to end homelessness to #makehomelessnesshistory and tackle this moral emergency once and for all.

Matt Lambert is the CEO of the Enterprise Homes Group. You can find out more about the work of the charity by visiting https://enterprisehomesgroup.org.uk