Small steps towards ending homelessness

Posted: December 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Scotland, Temporary accommodation, Wales | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

For all the positive proposals in the new homelessness strategy for England, there are still some big gaps to fill if it is to achieve its ambitions.

Nobody would disagree with the ‘long-term vision’ to ‘end homelessness and rough sleeping and ensure that everyone has access to a safe, decent and secure home’ but that future still looks a distant prospect. 

If the logic of making the shift from crisis management to prevention is undeniable, it remains to be seen whether the strategy will be enough to fix the crisis. 

And even if all the proposals are implemented in full, England will still be some way behind Scotland and Wales in ending homelessness (or, in practice, ensuring that homelessness is rare, brief and unrepeated).

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Child poverty, the two-child limit and beyond

Posted: December 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Local housing allowance, Poverty, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally written as column for Inside Housing.

There can be no solutions to child poverty that do not address the high cost of housing.

Take even a cursory glance at the government’s child poverty strategy published on Friday and you cannot avoid the direct links between deprivation in childhood and homelessness, a severe shortage of social housing and unaffordable private rents. 

The strategy builds on the abolition of the two-child limit in the Budget, which accounts for 450,000 of the 550,000 reduction in the number of children in poverty forecast by the end of this parliament.

Even taken on its own, this is a major change, perhaps the single most progressive thing that the Labour government has done since it took power. 

But as in the Budget you will search in vain for two other policies that will blunt its impact.

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