The Tories have overseen record-high homelessness, private rents and house prices during their 14 years in charge and the 2024 Conservative manifesto doubles down on policies in areas where they have failed to tackle the housing crisis.

Rishi Sunak’s bid to see off Keir Starmer and continue as prime minister has got off to a stuttering start following a series of blunders – not least leaving D-Day commemorations early – and a row over his claim that a Labour government would see £2,000 tax rises.

Sunak’s ‘clear plan’ led with tax cuts with the Tories promising to cut 2p from employees’ national insurance payments as well as a long-trailed promise to reintroduce national service for 18 year olds.

Launching the Conservative manifesto at Silverstone race circuit on Tuesday (11 June), Sunak said: “In this party, we believe that it is morally right that those who can work do work, and that hard work is rewarded with people being able to keep more of their own money. We will ensure that we have lower welfare so we can lower taxes.”

With the Tories trailing Labour in the polls – and even looking over their shoulders at Reform UK – it looks unlikely that they will remain in power.

But here’s what Sunak had to say about the Conservatives’ plans to tackle the housing crisis:

The Tories repeated their 2019 manifesto promise to scrap no-fault evictions

It’s now more than five years since then-PM Theresa May promised the Tories would scrap no-fault evictions, which allow renters to be evicted without a landlord giving a reason.

The pledge later cropped up in the 2019 manifesto but the Renters Reform Bill that was due to axe Section 21 evictions, as they are also known, failed to make it into law.

That’s after the bill faced accusations from pro-renter groups of being “watered down to appease landlords” following a series of concessions to Conservative backbenchers. No timeframe was ever given for no-fault evictions to be scrapped with the Tories arguing that court reforms must first be completed before a ban is brought in.

The 2024 Conservative manifesto repeats the promise from 2019 with the Tories vowing to “pass a Renters Reform Bill that will deliver fairness in the rental market for landlords and renters alike”. That means first delivering court reforms and strengthening other grounds for landlords to evict private tenants guilty of anti-social behaviour, the Tories added.

That falls short of the Renters Reform Coalition’s calls for an immediate no-fault eviction ban. The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change has also called for no-fault evictions to be scrapped.

Dan Wilson Craw, deputy chief executive at Generation Rent, said: “No-fault evictions make life intolerable for private renters, fuelling homelessness and making it difficult to complain about problems in your home. It is reassuring that the Conservatives remain committed to abolishing these evictions.

“But to enjoy genuinely fairer renting, tenants need stronger protections when evicted for reasons beyond our control, and from unaffordable rent increases that force us out of our homes.”

Ben Beadle, the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said: “Reform of the rental market should have taken place in the last parliament. As we said then, a balance between security for tenants and policies which retain the confidence of responsible landlords is crucial if we are to deliver much-needed homes for rent.”

The Conservative manifesto also promised to introduce two-year temporary capital gains tax relief for landlords who sell to their existing tenants.

Landlords who sell up to renters would not have to pay capital gains tax but doubts remain over whether tenants could afford to buy their home.

“To really have an impact, a portion of this tax break needs to go towards a discount on the price for the tenant, otherwise few will be able to afford to buy out their landlord,” said WIlson Craw.

“But many tenants aren’t in a position to buy at all: 23,000 households faced homelessness between April and December 2023 because their landlord was selling up. Tenants should therefore have the option to nominate another buyer, such as a housing co-op or the council, who would allow them to stay. This would mean the policy not only boosted home ownership but reduced homelessness too.”

Beadle said the policy “will not reverse the damage to the rental market caused by tax hikes under recent Conservative governments”.

Ending rough sleeping returns without a deadline

The 2019 manifesto promised the Tories would end rough sleeping by this year.

That target was missed with the annual rough sleeping snapshot showing 3,898 people were homeless on the streets in a single night in autumn 2023. That’s more than double the 1,768 people counted on the streets when the Tories were voted into power in 2010.

The 2024 manifesto promises to continue plans to end rough sleeping and prevent people from ending up on the streets, citing “significant progress over the last few years”.

This time around, the Conservatives have not committed to a date. The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change called on all political parties to commit to ending rough sleeping by 2030, as Sadiq Khan has pledged to do in London.

Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter, said “Despite rents surging, evictions soaring and record homelessness, the Conservative manifesto fails to provide a secure future for the millions of people whose lives are being devastated by the housing emergency.

“It beggars belief that there is no clear plan to tackle spiralling homelessness.”

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The only mention of social housing is down to ‘scapegoating’

The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change has called for all political leaders to commit to building more affordable and social housing if they are voted in as the next government.

There was no such commitment in the 2024 Conservative manifesto.

The party pledged to renew its Affordable Homes Programme that will deliver homes of all tenures and focus on regenerating and improving housing estates. The programme is set to deliver 180,000 new homes across England by the end of March 2029.

There was also a promise to build 1.6 million new homes during the parliament, tellingly 100,000 more than Labour pledged and just less than 600,000 more than they have managed to build since 2019. The Tories pledged to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s but failed to hit that mark while in power.

Sunak’s party also pledged to “protect the green belt from uncontrolled development” instead focusing building efforts on brownfield land. That’s after Sunak accused Starmer of “concreting over the countryside” in last week’s televised debate in reference to Labour’s plans to target the ’grey belt’.

Instead, the only direct mention of social housing is in reference to the ‘British homes for British workers’ plan that caused a stir in January.

The Conservative manifesto vowed to legislate for new local connection and UK connection tests for social housing in England to “ensure this valuable but limited resource is allocated fairly”.

The plans amount to ”scapegoating people for the failure to build enough”, according to Shelter chief executive Neate.

“With 1.3 million households stuck on social housing waiting lists and over a quarter of a million social homes lost in the last decade, no party can deliver a secure future until they commit to building 90,000 social homes a year with rents tied to local incomes,” said Neate.

Help to Buy gets a revival

Keir Starmer told Rishi Sunak in last week’s debate that the dream of homeownership was over for young people.

Sunak later admitted to BBC’s Nick Robinson that it “has got harder” to own a home over the last 14 years of Tory rule.

The 2024 Conservative manifesto is to permanently abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers up to £425,000 from £300,000.

A new Help to Buy scheme will also be introduced to support people on to the housing ladder.

The latest Help to Buy scheme, which allowed people to buy a home with a 5% deposit, ended in March 2023.

The demand-side measure has faced accusations that it increases house prices in the past, especially when there is a shortage of homes on the market to begin with.

“Help to Buy has been proven to do more harm to our housing system than good,” said Shelter’s Neate. “Not only does it drive up house prices and help only a small minority of people, it ultimately takes money away from building genuinely affordable housing.”

The manifesto also addressed calls for the Thatcher-era Right to Buy scheme to be scrapped.

The Tories ruled out what it called “Labour’s anti-aspiration move” to reduce Right to Buy discounts and said it would “fight any plan by local authorities to abolish the Right to Buy altogether.

The latter comes after Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said he wanted to suspend Right to Buy to protect the 10,000 social homes he plans to build in the region.

Leasehold laws are ‘half-finished and watered-down’

The Tories rushed through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act in wash-up after Sunak called the 4 July general election.

Progress has been slow on leasehold reform. At one point in the last Parliament, housing secretary Michael Gove promised to abolish leasehold altogether before later backtracking.

The 2024 manifesto is a step down from 2019 when the party promised to set ground rents to a nominal peppercorn value immediately, for example. Five years later that has been downgraded to setting the cap at £250, although the Tories plan to reduce it to peppercorn over time.

“Their 2024 manifesto entitled “Clear Plan – Bold Action – Secure Future” ironically is a clear plan on leasehold to boldly action a watered-down version of what they promised in the past,” said Linz Darlington, managing director of lease extension specialists Homehold.

“When taken in isolation, the Conservatives’ commitment to “Complete the process of Leasehold Reform” doesn’t sound too bad. But, it is arguably just a concession that they left leasehold reform too late in the last parliamentary process, and that the bill they hurried through in washup is half finished.”

Darlington added: “What we need from the next government is to concentrate on a successful implementation of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. They should start with the provisions that are easy to enact and don’t require further consultation, such as longer lease extensions. The current government has estimated most key provisions will be in place by ‘2025-2026’, and whoever is in power, it will take time to get this right.”

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Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood Airport closed its doors in 2022 when its owners said it was no longer commercially viable. It is on track to reopen after a 125-year lease was signed in March.

But perhaps some more blue sky thinking could see the space and buildings utilised in a different way: what if the shuttered airport could be used to tackle the housing crisis instead?

That’s the challenge that a group of architects, academics, gardeners, structural and aerospace engineers have set themselves.

Their solution involves transforming the old Robin Hood Airport into a co-living space with room for 15,000 homes – a housing estate complete with ‘streets’ inside a terminal building, homes utilising old aeroplanes, a climbing frame made out of a cockpit and rewilded runways.

The proposal is one three up for architectural award The Davidson Prize with this year’s theme focused on rethinking homes through adapting and reusing existing materials.

While the idea is still taxiing, there are hopes it could take off in the future, offering a solution to the climate and housing crises as well as the uncertain future of the UK’s regional airports.

The Big Issue spoke to Alma-nac architects Chris Bryant and Rachel Foreman about the plans to see if they can get the idea off the ground.

The pair worked with structural engineer Brian Constant, University of Westminster gardener/architect Eric Guidbert and aerospace engineer Mark Blackwell to create a transformative vision for the 300-hectare site of the former airport in Sheffield.

Bryant says the combination of big buildings, lots of space and excellent transport links made airports an excellent choice for housing estates.

“Airports are well connected. They’re pretty soulless places, but there’s also huge amounts of land,” he says.

“The infrastructure we have now will not be the infrastructure that we need in 25 years. So we are going to be left with airports and airfields.

“Commercial airports tend to be very well connected to city centres, have large areas of flat land, they have big sheds which are brilliant to use either to create really interesting housing or to create community spaces or a space to build new housing.”

Bryant believes advances in aviation technology could mean shorter runways are needed for drones and fixed-wing aircrafts and self-driving cars could make the infrastructure around airports more efficient over the next 25 years. 

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That means some much-needed space to build could be opened up without using the green belt or the grey belt, as Labour is targeting. 

But it is not as simple as just throwing up as many homes as possible and calling it a day.

The proposal calls for a shift in how people live too, growing materials sustainably on site and repurposing redundant aircraft as part of the process.

Insulation from planes could be recycled and incorporated into homes, parts of the aircraft could be used to create balconies in transforming the terminal building into a community and living space and so on.

“We’re suggesting self-build communities,” says Bryant. “You’ve got all these great big air hangars, you could grow hemp and native timber species in the land, you could build your own home over generations.”

It’s not for everyone, Bryant and Foreman admit, but they are working to make it a cost-effective way of living for people who are locked out of the housing market.

“As a younger person I think it’s really hard to buy a house now,” says Foreman. “Even just getting on the property ladder at all I don’t see how it is getting better without a sort of shift in either the way that we live and the way that we share and the way that we invest together.”

The housing crisis facing Gen Z is one of the criteria in mind for Davidson Prize judges.

Alice Finney, a journalist on the judging panel, tells the Big Issue that the radical nature of the proposal impressed judges, who will announce a winner on 19 June.

“We were looking for really robust, radical approaches, perhaps using spaces that we haven’t considered before,” says Finney.

“It’s a topic that, I think, aligns really nicely with the focus that we had on Generation Z and their housing crisis and is tied really nicely to the climate crisis.” 

The climate crisis means the tide is turning against airports in the future too.

France has already banned short-haul domestic flights under 2.5 hours and Spain looks likely to follow suit.

While there is no indication that will be replicated in the UK anytime soon, the race to limit carbon emissions to reach net-zero is likely to see fewer flights in the skies.

“There are quite a few airports in the UK currently that just fly to Scotland, for example – we believe that shouldn’t particularly be a thing in the future,” says Foreman.

The Travel Foundation, a group advocating for positive tourism, found only one scenario for the tourism sector to achieve net-zero by 2050 while also allowing for growth.

It called for less of a focus on offsetting carbon emissions and instead focusing on decarbonisation and capping the number of long-haul flights at 2019 levels – about 120 million return trips.

Long distance trips make up just 2% of the total journeys but contribute the most pollution. If they continued at this pace, they would account for 41% of the tourism sector’s total emissions by 2050 compared to 19% in 2019.

Meanwhile, regional airports have been facing an uncertain future since Covid hit the travel sector hard.

One former regional airport that shut its doors in 2011 could even see homes built on the site in the near future.

Sutton Harbour Group – the owner of the former Plymouth City Airport site – is reportedly eyeing the possibility of building after an order from the government’s planning inspector protecting against development lapsed this year.

If this is a sign of the way of travel for the future, the Robin Hood Airport proposal is looking to spark conversation now on how the opportunity can be harnessed to tackle the housing crisis.

Beyond The Davidson Prize, Alma-nac plans to convince the government or other organisations to back them to explore the idea of using airports for housing.

“We understand the short-term economic gains and if there’s a job shortage, it will generate jobs. We understand that mayors are there, elected every four or five years, to do that. But it’s not a long-term solution and we do need to have some long-term thinking about what we’re going to do with this infrastructure,” says Bryant.

“We understand that people will reopen airports but we also need to have visions about what we are going to do in 15, 20, 25 years and we need to have these conversations now because it takes that time to have huge strategic change.

“Investing in time and effort now in these ideas means that as it changes, and it will change, that we can implement these ideas and aren’t just left with all this land and it becomes a race to build whatever we can.”

If the idea takes off, perhaps it could play a role in landing the homes Britain desperately needs.

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Leasehold reform has been a long-running government promise since Boris Johnson won his 2019 landslide. Scotland doesn’t have the controversial mode of home ownership, while even government ministers admit it’s a “feudal” system.

But despite the Conservative pledge to reform leasehold, progress has been slow. Anger has grown from leaseholders and campaigners at the watering-down of the reforms. After Rishi Sunak called an early election, the government’s flagship leasehold reforms were rushed through parliament – but in a reduced form.

From abandoned promises to ground rent compromises, here’s everything you need to know about the progress of leasehold reform.

What is leasehold?

Leasehold properties make up 20% of the English housing stock. It’s most common for flats, with 94% of owner-occupied flats being leaseholds. Just 8% of houses in England are leasehold.

Leaseholders don’t own the land their property sits on, and instead lease it from a freeholder for a number of years. When you buy a leasehold property, you buy the lease, which will have a certain number of years remaining. Extending this lease is expensive, and most lenders will refuse to give a mortgage for a property with fewer than 70 years remaining.

Leaseholders pay ground rent to the freeholder, as well as service charges for the management and maintenance of the property. In March 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority found ground rents to be “neither legally nor commercially necessary”.

What have the Conservatives promised on leasehold reform?

Reforming leasehold is not a new idea, nor an unconservative one. Margaret Thatcher famously said “there is no prouder word in history than freeholder”.

In 2017, Theresa May’s manifesto included a promise to “crack down on unfair practices in leasehold, such as escalating ground rents”.

Boris Johnson went further in 2019, running on a manifesto which said: “We will continue with our reforms to leasehold including implementing our ban on the sale of new leasehold homes, restricting ground rents to a peppercorn, and providing necessary mechanisms of redress for tenants.”

Since then, the Law Commission has made more than 300 recommendations to abolish leasehold.

The shape of the reforms became clear when the government introduced the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill to the House of Commons in November 2023.

The government is planning to ban new leasehold houses – but has proposed no changes to existing houses, or flats of any kind.

For existing leaseholders, a number of changes were proposed.

Firstly, the new law would make it easier and cheaper to extend your lease, and make the standard extension 990 years. Anybody extending their lease can pay a premium – 0.1% of the freehold value – to reduce ground rent to a nominal “peppercorn” value.

Leaseholders will no longer have to wait two years before benefitting from changes to their lease.

The abolition of marriage value is also planned. As the number of years on a lease runs down, the resale value of the property decreases. But leaseholders who extend their lease must pay the freeholder 50% of the value added by the extension – known as marriage value

For people fighting service charges, there will be increased transparency on fees, and the ability to request information. Leaseholders will also be given the ability to change their managing agent.

In January 2023, housing secretary Michael Gove went even further, saying the government had plans to scrap leasehold altogether by the end of the year.

What is happening with leasehold reform now?

To put it briefly: the promise to abolish leasehold didn’t happen. There has been controversy as the plans and promises have stuttered upon contact with reality.

As part of the “wash up”, when bills are rushed through to become law after an election is called, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform bill became law on 24 May.

A number of original promises did survive and become reality. These included making the standard leasehold extension 990 years, up from 90 years for flats and 50 years for houses. Leaseholders also will now not need to wait two years before extending their leases.

On service charges, managing agents will now have to issue bills in a “standardised format”, to make it easier for residents to scrutinise and understand the fees. Buildings insurance commissions have been banned, and replaced with “transparent and fair handling fees”

But a number of promises made during the process have not survived, such as a cap on ground rent. Plans to reduce ground rents to a nominal “peppercorn” value became a mooted £250 cap. In the end, neither was part of the final bill.

The manifesto promise of banning new leasehold homes has only partly been achieved – only new leasehold houses will be banned, and even then

Campaigners also wanted “fleecehold” and forfeiture banned. Fleecehold is where homes are sold as freehold, but include service charges in the same way leasehold properties do. Forfeiture involves leaseholders losing their homes for non-payment of small fees. However, a ban on forfeiture was also absent from the final bill

During one debate, Lords accused Gove of “shoddy politics”.

“What we have before us today is a virtually eviscerated shell of the bill,” said Labour’s Baroness Taylor during a debate on the bill.

“I have received many representations from young people whose dreams of home ownership have been shattered when they finally save their deposit and buy a home, only to find that the terms of their lease leave them at best shackled to a regime of unreasonable cost increases, and at worst unable to sell their home because the lease conditions are too onerous,” Taylor added.

A government minister has also admitted any changes are unlikely to come into effect in “2025-26”.

What will Labour do about leasehold if elected?

Labour had promised to abolish leasehold within 100 days of government. Now, they’re not putting a date on it – seen in some quarters as another of Keir Starmer’s abandoned promises. Labour MP Barry Gardiner said his party was “absolutely committed to wholesale leasehold reform in its first term”, but said the specific number of days didn’t matter.

Deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Labour is committed to comprehensive leasehold reform, enacting the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in full.”

Matthew Pennycook, Labour’s shadow housing secretary, said Labour will “deliver” where the Conservatives have “failed”, adding “ending service charge abuse ultimately requires bringing the feudal leasehold system to an end”.

Ending service charge abuse ultimately requires bringing the feudal leasehold system to an end.

The Tories have failed to honour the promises they made to millions of leaseholders.

A Labour government will deliver where they have failed.https://t.co/3BqI1uGqe8

— Matthew Pennycook (@mtpennycook) May 28, 2024

What do campaigners say about the progress of leasehold reform?

With the reforms falling short of the government’s initial promises, there have been calls for the plans to go further.

Delays are causing pain to leaseholders, say campaigners. “The delay in leasehold reform is going to cause a lot of financial hardship to households at a time when they are still bearing the increased burden of high inflation,” said Suz Muna of Social Housing Action Campaign, a group which helps leaseholders fight service charges and has gained over 14,000 signatures on a petition to get service charges debated in parliament.

“The big, corporate landlords have sufficient funds in reserves and surpluses to absorb reduced ground rents. Our members do not. It means many more will fall into arrears even after sacrificing other essentials.”

It’s not just campaigners who are pushing the government to go further. Former minister Gavin Williamson wants his party to cap service charge increases, and believes Michael Gove can do so without the need for new legislation.

Harry Scoffin, founder of anti-leasehold campaign group Free Leaseholders, says leaseholders could become single-issue voters at the next election. With many finding themselves “financial hostages” in their own homes, they could punish Rishi Sunak at the ballot box.

“The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill does not go far enough. These are not my words, but those of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parliamentarians. To beef up the bill, government must abolish forfeiture, a gangster-like tool used to extort money from hapless leaseholders,” says Scoffin.

“It must also put rocket boosters under Right to Manage and collective enfranchisement to let more leaseholders take back control of their homes, money and lives. Finally, the government must deliver the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge to abolish new leasehold homes, including flats. That means mandating share of freehold, if not commonhold, for all future apartments.”

Temporary accommodation is posing a “shocking strain” on local councils in England, with a quarter spending 5% of their budget on short-term solutions for households experiencing homelessness, research has found. 

A report from campaign group Generation Rent has found that just under a quarter (24%) of the 249 local councils in England analysed in the research spent at least £1 in every £20 of their budget on temporary accommodation in 2022 to 2023. 

The research found that Hastings, Crawley, Arun, Swale and Rother were among the local councils spending the biggest proportion of their budgets on temporary accommodation.

Households are placed by councils in temporary accommodation when they are made homeless and the council has a legal obligation to rehouse them, but regular private or social housing is unavailable. Usage of temporary accommodation has soared across England in recent years amid the worsening housing crisis. 

According to the Local Government Association, the number of households now living in temporary accommodation has risen by 89% over the past decade, costing local councils at least £1.74bn in 2022 to 2023.

In 2023, the growing need for temporary accommodation – with many homeless families living in often unsuitable and overcrowded B&Bs and hostels – was described as a “humanitarian crisis”.

• Homeless families in temporary accommodation highest since records began
• Homelessness at heart of councils’ £4bn funding black hole, MPs warn: ‘It’s an out-of-control crisis’

Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, described the costs of temporarily housing homeless households as a “shocking strain” for a “totally preventable” problem. 

“Where once people were able to find safe and affordable homes, we are now living in total insecurity, within a cruel and broken system,” Twomey explained. 

He added that private renters are in desperate need of a law to prevent Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, which he describes as a “leading cause of homelessness in our country“.

“After many delays and watering-down… the government scrapped the Renters (Reform) Bill after calling the election. The bill was already not in a fit state to offer renters the vital protections that they need, yet further delays mean that renters will continue to be driven into temporary accommodation,” he explained.

“It is now a matter of urgency that the next government introduce these long-overdue reforms to make renting work for the millions of private renters and the local communities being saddled with spiralling temporary accommodation costs.”

There is a crisis in temporary accommodations.

Because of Section 21 evictions and increasing rent costs, more and more people are becoming homeless, which is costing councils bigger amounts of their core budgets.

This needs to end.

Our blog is here ⤵️https://t.co/Rtw1CxbAoq

— Generation Rent (@genrentuk) June 5, 2024

The research comes as the government has shelved the Renters (Reform) Bill in the run-up to the general election on 4 July, with the bill promising to bring vital protections from eviction for renters.

At the 2019 general election, all of the major parties supported an end to “no fault” evictions, which gives landlords the power to evict tenants without a reason. This rally to end Section 21 evictions is also echoed in Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change call for the incoming government in July.

Over five years, however, the Renters (Reform) Bill was delayed, then watered-down, and has now been shelved as the government called a general election and failed to pass the bill on parliament’s last two sitting days.

In 2023, Generation Rent estimated that one renter could face a no-fault eviction claim every 15 minutes over the six-week summer holiday as parliament took its recess.

“Urgent action is needed to end unfair evictions and Generation Rent will not stop campaigning until renters are protected,” the group said.

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Keir Starmer has unveiled his plan to help over 80,000 young people into homeownership with Labour’s Freedom to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme.

The favourite to be prime minister after the general election on 4 July said Labour would make the existing mortgage guarantee scheme permanent, and rebrand and re-market it to make it more attractive to lenders and buyers.

The current mortgage guarantee scheme has been running since April 2021 and sees participating lenders offering 95% mortgages under a government guarantee.

The scheme is set to expire in June 2025 but Starmer said making it permanent would offer certainty and stability to improve take-up.

The announcement comes just days after the Labour leader told Rishi Sunak that the dream of owning a home was gone for young people in the first televised general election debate. The prime minister agreed it was “too hard” for youngsters to get on the housing ladder but accused Labour of making it harder through higher taxes.

Starmer said: “After 14 years of Conservative government, the dream of homeownership is out of reach for too many hard-working people. Despite doing everything right, they can’t move on and up. A generation face becoming renters for life.

“My parents’ home gave them security and was a foundation for our family. As prime minister, I will turn the dream of owning a home into a reality.

“Our changed Labour Party will be on the side of the builders not the blockers, to get Britain building again. My Labour government will help first-time buyers onto the ladder with a new Freedom to Buy scheme for those without a large deposit, and by giving them first dibs on new developments. Labour backs hard work and ambition, and will clear the way for the opportunity to own a home. It’s time to stop the chaos, turn the page and rebuild Britain.”

Labour said the new scheme will help first-time buyers who struggle to save for a large deposit and can’t rely on relatives to help them find the cash.

Both Sunak and Starmer were asked about census figures that showed the most common living situation for young people aged 20 to 24 years of age was living with their parents in the debate.

That’s because rising house prices have sent the deposits surging while record-high rents restrict the possibility to save up for one.

The result is first-time buyers have to rely on the bank of mum and dad. The opposition party cited research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that found half of young first-time buyers now receive financial support from family to buy their home, with an average gift of £25,000.

Labour said the best way to give young people the freedom to move out of their childhood home is to build more properties. The party has pleaded to build 1.5 million over the next Parliament.

It is unclear how many of these homes will be social homes – the Big Issue’s blueprint for change is calling for all political leaders to commit to building more affordable and social homes over the next government’s term.

But the party also claimed the Tories are currently not planning to extend the mortgage guarantee scheme beyond June next year and that would leave 65,000 young people denied the chance to own their home.

The average value of a home purchased under the scheme is £202,000, according to Labour, who also claimed the price is reportedly almost as much as the £210,000 South Kensington flat Sunak bought as his first home with a six-figure loan from his parents.

Labour’s proposals to tackle the housing crisis – including pledges to reform the planning system, build on the grey belt and reintroduce housing targets – earned praise from housing developers, insurers and YIMBY campaigners.

Robert Sinclair, chief executive of the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries, said: “By delivering a permanent support facility, this will give the whole market confidence and avoid the stop/start nature of previous initiatives. Getting more first-time buyers onto the housing ladder through such innovation will deliver a much-needed boost to consumer confidence and the wider economy. 

“By combining government support with lender assessments, the mortgage advisor community will be able to ensure as many working people as possible can benefit from this scheme. By reducing deposit requirements more people will attain their dream of owning their own home.”

Freddie Poser, executive director at PricedOut, added: “PricedOut welcomes the ambition to finally tackle the UK’s intense housing shortage by getting much more supply where it is most needed.

“This is the only way to solve the housing crisis and finally give young people a chance at homeownership again.”

But Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, called on the party tipped to take power to take action to support private renters too.

Twomey said first-time buyers still need to find £12,497 for a deposit on a 5% mortgage – rising to £21,669 in London – and that’s a tall order for renters.

“While attention to the housing struggles of young adults is welcome, our work or personal circumstances mean not all of us are able to live at home with parents until we save enough to buy our first home. 12 million people are privately renting right now and more than half of us have no savings at all,” said Twomey.

“Trying to put aside a house deposit while renting is like pushing a boulder up a hill that keeps getting steeper and steeper. The next government must slam the brakes on soaring rents by limiting the current free-for-all that’s forcing a third of renters’ incomes straight into the pockets of landlords.

“If rent rises continue to outpace wage growth, more tenants could face homelessness than benefit from this scheme.”

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Almost 3,000 people experiencing homelessness have been punished under the Vagrancy Act since 2021 – despite a Tory promise to scrap the 200-year-old law that criminalises rough sleeping.

A total of 2,947 people have been charged with an offence under the Vagrancy Act which reached a first hearing at a magistrates court in England and Wales since 2021, according to a freedom of information request by the Liberal Democrats.

That was the year when the Tories vowed to axe the law, which harks back to dealing with soldiers returning to the UK from the Napoleonic Wars. Then-housing secretary Robert Jenrick told parliament in February 2021 the Vagrancy Act was an “antiquated piece of legislation whose time has been and gone”. 

It remains in operation three years later and was due to be replaced by the controversial Criminal Justice Bill until Rishi Sunak ended its progress through parliament when he called the general election.

That was after the failed bill caused uproar for being more draconian than the legislation it was due to replace with the threat of action over ‘smells’ and £2,500 fines or prison sentences.

Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon Layla Moran, who has been campaigning to scrap the bill since 2018, said: “It is shocking that police continue to have the powers to charge rough sleepers with a criminal offence due to the government’s failure to repeal the Vagrancy Act and to use those powers to such great effect.

“No one should be criminalised for sleeping rough, especially by a piece of legislation passed in the Georgian era.

“It is highly unsurprising that the government has backed away from their promise to repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824. The government has shown they do not care about vulnerable people who have no home; they are intent on treating rough sleepers with cruelty and criminalisation.”

The Lib Dem figures show the police force which charged the most people under the Vagrancy Act was West Yorkshire Police where 837 rough sleepers had cases heard at a magistrates court.

Elsewhere, the Metropolitan Police charged 228 people since 2021 while Thames Valley Police took action against 128 people.

A total of 267 people in Nottinghamshire faced punishment as 223 people were charged across Greater Manchester and a further 167 in Merseyside.

But not all police forces relied heavily on the act – just four uses were recorded each in Surrey and Sussex over the three years.

Overall, the use of the powers has declined with 1,350 offences in 2021, down to 885 in 2022 and 712 in 2023.

Frontline homelessness organisations have long argued that authorities have sufficient powers to tackle anti-social behaviour and there is no need to replace the Vagrancy Act.

Campaigners originally thought that they had removed it from law when the government accepted an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022.

But ministers delayed the repeal, stating the Vagrancy Act would not be axed until it was replaced by new legislation.

That replacement, the Criminal Justice Bill, proved controversial and even faced opposition from Conservative MPs over its plans to criminalise ‘nuisance rough sleeping’.

Before the bill fell thanks to the general election, the Home Office was forced to backtrack on measures which could see rough sleepers face action over smells.

The government department removed the clause from the act and said that it related to “rubbish dumped or human waste” rather than people.

It also said rough sleepers would be directed to support before facing police action. 

Home secretary James Cleverly said: “This government listens, and we have worked hard to ensure these proposals prioritise helping vulnerable individuals, whilst ensuring communities are safer and better protected.”

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It remains to be seen whether the next government will repeal the Vagrancy Act or choose to replace it with new legislation.

But a string of high-profile cases in recent months have kept the issue of how people experiencing homelessness are treated on the agenda.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman triggered a furious reaction when she described street homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”.

Just days later, footage of rough sleepers’ tents being destroyed in Camden went viral with the Met Police later apologising for unlawfully arresting one man.

Footage of a man appearing to have his belongings doused in bleach outside a McDonald’s restaurant in central London also sparked outrage.

And just last week, grassroots group Streets Kitchen accused Camden Council of “forcibly moving” people sleeping rough outside their headquarters.

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Renters living in five housing estates set to be demolished and rebuilt in London are claiming they are being evicted to make way for people who are already homeless.

An estimated 163 households living across five estates earmarked for regeneration in Lambeth have received no-fault eviction notices.

Lambeth Council’s regeneration projects on the Fenwick, Central Hill, Cressingham Gardens, South Lambeth and Westbury estates have been set to be demolished for more than a decade.

But renters who are set to be ousted from their properties have teamed up to fight the evictions as the Homes for Lambeth Tenants group. They have warned they are being pushed out of the borough with nowhere else to go.

Jules Zakolska, 26, and her partner July Kaliszewski, 23, the pair have lived on Fenwick Estate for two years and pay £1,310 a month to rent their flat.

Now they face an uncertain future after they received a Section 21 notice on 1 February.

Zakolska said: “I opened that email and I was like, ‘Oh no.’ The one thing that I care about the most, I guess it is happening. So it was a shock and I was just overwhelmed and sad and angry and confused and didn’t know why it’s happening.

“We are fighting so much to stay because we have made this flat a home. The council is not really talking to us at all. But the agent said that they think that the council wants to make this into temporary accommodation, maybe social housing. But how? This flat came unfurnished so all the furniture is my partners’ and mine and we really made it a home, we have a cat who has just got used to this flat. This is like a total upheaval in our lives.”

Zakolska and her partner both came to the UK from Poland in 2020 to study and her partner is currently working as a bartender while finishing their master’s degree. 

Zakolska was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2022 but has been growing plants in her home to boost her income.

She fears that having to move out of the area to find a suitable home in her price bracket will disrupt her life and has managed to negotiate with the council to push back her eviction to 7 December. Zakolska insists she will continue to fight to keep her home.

“I’ve checked but there is literally nothing. We would have to move out of the borough or apply for the council’s homelessness prevention duty,” said Zakolska.

“The council basically has a duty to prevent us from going homeless, but they are the ones that are causing the homelessness.”

She added: “I feel like my wary of dealing with this is action and just doing everything in my power to stop this. I’m very motivated but it has been very stressful. I refuse to accept the decision and I will do everything in my power to stop this.

“I can be strong because I have my community around me. I have people that think similarly that this is an injustice.”

Former local Green Party councillor Peter Elliott has already been evicted from his property on the Central Hill estate.

He has been sofa surfing with a friend after leaving his home in July last year when his landlord sold their property back to the council.

Elliott, who is the Green Party candidate for Dulwich and West Norwood at the upcoming general election, visited his old home on local election polling day to find it boarded up. It now stands empty, one of 146 vacant properties across the estates.

“We were seeing a huge uptick in antisocial behaviour around the empty homes that we have with unlicensed music events and things like that,” said Elliott. 

“They also started moving people in who were in temporary accommodation and so sometimes these were people that had been evicted from other parts of the borough and they were just using Central Hill estate as a dumping ground.”

Like Zakolska, Elliott also accused Lambeth Council of moving renters out to make way for people who are already experiencing homelessness.

The Green Party supporter also criticised the Labour-run council for issuing no-fault eviction notices at a time when the national Labour Party has vowed to scrap them.

The Renters Reform Bill was supposed to get rid of no-fault evictions for good until Rishi Sunak’s general election announcement killed it off. That’s despite it being a 2019 Conservative manifesto promise.

If, as expected, Keir Starmer wins the race to Number 10, Labour have promised to axe no-fault evictions.

“The only reason that they’re saying that they’re moving people out now is because they need to put people in temporary accommodation in them,” said Elliott. “But you’re creating a problem by evicting all these people, they are going to be made homeless, most of them, and you’re just creating more of a problem for yourself as the council so it doesn’t make any sense.”

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He added: “They’re campaigning against Section 21 notices, but their council is dishing out dozens of Section 21 notices potentially. So none of it makes any sense and, in the middle of a housing and cost of living crisis, this is the last time people need to be looking for housing.”

Another resident Vid told the Big Issue he moved into a flat at Cressingham Gardens with his partner in December but learned two months later that he would have to leave the property at the end of his tenancy in November.

That was after the 27 year old had already spent more than £1,000 furnishing the property.

“I think we were shocked to hear this,” he said. “We had invested quite a lot of money purchasing furniture and stuff because me and my partner were just moving in together and we were hoping to make this house a home for us to live in for the foreseeable future.”

He added: “We are quite annoyed at the communication that we have received because there was no indication that we would have to leave the property.

“If we had known that, number one, the council was going to be our landlord, and number two, that this decision was going to be made, then we would have thought twice about investing so much money and moving here.”

There are a record number of people living in temporary accommodation in England with the most recent official statistics revealing 112,000 households are now in a non-permanent home.

That’s a 10% rise in the last year alone and has seen several warnings from councils across the country that mounting housing costs are putting them on the brink of bankruptcy.

The housing crisis is particularly acute in London and Lambeth has had its own challenges in recent years.

A 2022 review from late civil servant Lord Kerslake found Homes for Lambeth – the council’s housebuilding arm – had only started building 65 homes since being set up in 2017.

That review recommended that Homes for Lambeth operations were to be brought back into the council as soon as possible. Following a review, the authority decided property previously let on the private market could be repurposed for people with the most extreme housing need.

Lambeth Council said there was never any intention for the homes to be let on the private market in the long-term but tenants have accused them of a lack of transparency over their plans, leaving them in limbo.

The council said the homes are former council properties sold off through Right to Buy that have been bought back by the local authority.

“The agencies managing the tenancies on behalf of Homes for Lambeth have contacted tenants to let them know that their tenancy will not be renewed and, where suitable, to offer support to help them find alternative accommodation,” a spokesperson said.

Protestors also occupied the council’s office in January in a call for action after a one-year-old baby was hospitalised six times in a year due to the conditions of her home.

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It took an hour but the housing crisis finally showed up at the first televised general election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, when the prime minister candidates were asked if young people should give up on becoming a first-time buyer.

On Tuesday (4 June), ITV presenter Julie Etchingham told Sunak and Starmer that the most common living arrangement for 18 to 34 year olds is living with their parents. She asked a question from audience member Miles: “Do the young need to change their expectations of homeownership now?”

Sunak agreed it is “too hard to own your own home” and said the government had built one million homes during this parliament.

The prime minister said that he wants to make it easier for young people to save for a deposit, arguing that “taxing you more makes it even harder to get on the property ladder”. He also accused Labour of planning to “concrete over the countryside”.

Starmer said the dream of owning a home had “all but gone” for young people and said that people waiting until their late-30s to get on the property ladder was “shocking”. He vowed to build 1.5 million homes while Labour is in government but said “picking a number requires a plan” – no doubt in reference to the Tories’ failure to hit its target of building 300,000 homes per year.

The Labour leader said he would have to change planning laws and give mayors and local leaders the powers they need to build homes and surrounding amenities.

“We’ve got a clear plan to deliver on the homes,” said Starmer.

How old are first-time buyers in the UK?

New research from Mojo Mortgages found the average of a first-time buyer in the UK is 33 years and eight months.

That’s not the case for every part of the UK. People in Wales buy their first home at the age of 31 on average while first-time buyers in London have to wait until the age of 36 years and eight months.

Average house prices in the UK were 283,000 as of March this year according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Saving up for a deposit can be difficult for first-time buyers, particularly if they are paying record-high rents while trying to put cash in the bank.

That’s why Etchingham cited the number of people living with their parents to cut down on costs in her question to Starmer and Sunak.

The 2021 census in England and Wales showed the total number of adult children living with their parents rose 14.7% in the decade since the 2011 Census.

Just short of five million adult children were in that situation, up from 4.2 million 10 years earlier.

That is partly down to the cost of a deposit for a house.

The research from Mojo Mortgages found first-time buyers in London need to find a mammoth £108,848 on average for a deposit.

That’s three times as much as in the North East where first-time buyers pay £29,740 on average but that deposit remains only a few thousand pounds short of the average salary across the UK.

Full-time employees in England could expect to pay around 8.3 times their salary when buying a home, according to the ONS. In Wales it is 6.1 times annual earnings.

John Fraser-Tucker, head of mortgages at Mojo Mortgages said: “These figures highlight several financial challenges that first-time buyers in 2024 are facing. 

“Firstly, a combination of stagnant wages and the cost of living crisis has made it harder for buyers to save a deposit due to a lack of disposable income. Higher living expenses, including rent, utilities, and daily costs, make it increasingly difficult to set aside money for a deposit. These obstacles collectively push the average age of a first-time buyer higher, delaying the dream of homeownership for many.”

Rising mortgage rates are also a barrier for young first-time buyers even if they can scrape together a deposit.

Mortgage rates have surged due to the impact of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget in 2022 and the Bank of England’s strategy of raising interest rates to combat inflation.

The average five-year fixed rate rate for 85% loan-to-value mortgages – requiring a 15% deposit – is now 5.02% down from 5.1% a year ago, according to Rightmove.

The property site said that would mean the average mortgage payment for a first-time buyer property is now £1,135 per month.

Matt Smith, Rightmove’s mortgage expert, said a review of mortgage affordability criteria could help young first-time buyers.

“There’s an opportunity to unlock greater affordability in a responsible way, which could help more first-time buyers get on the ladder,” said Smith.

“First-time buyers are already taking out longer mortgage terms and lender innovation has included the introduction of longer-term fixed rates that are likely to be part of the solution as they help by ensuring certainty of payments. Various mortgage schemes have played their part and supported a number of people, and we know from our research that people would like to see new schemes introduced, but we think longer-term solutions would be more effective than short-term schemes.

“Either way, it’s most likely that regulatory change is needed, so it’s critical that the government works with regulators and lenders from day one on any mortgage solutions, to ensure buy in and take up, which will in turn create more options for first-time buyers.”

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The Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change is calling for more affordable social housing to be built to help people out of poverty.

Building more social rent homes is widely accepted as vital to tackling the housing crisis by offering people more affordable rents and easing the demand for private rented homes which have seen rents hit record highs in recent times. 

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Ending rough sleeping is no easy task, but it takes a lot of money, collective effort, political will and smart choices to do it – the general election could have a big say on whether it happens.

The Conservatives pledged to end rough sleeping in their manifesto on their way to a landslide victory in the 2019 general election.

A lot has happened since then – a pandemic, three prime ministers, the cost of living crisis, an untold number of political scandals and even the former home secretary Suella Braverman describing street homelessness as a “lifestyle choice”.

What has not happened in that time is the end of rough sleeping. The governments headed by Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak failed to hit the 2019 manifesto target.

In fact, the official rough sleeping count showed rough sleeping in England rose in 2023 – 3,898 people were counted on the streets last autumn. The number of rough sleepers has doubled since the Tories came to power in 2010.

While it is an overall government target to end homelessness, it takes different departments to tackle the issue.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has the lead brief but it takes the Department of Health and Social Care to treat greater health needs of people experiencing homelessness and the Ministry of Justice to ensure prisoners are not released into homelessness.

The Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions are responsible for ensuring households have a financial safety net to prevent homelessness. The Home Office also has a role to play.

But the prospect of ending rough sleeping still seems far away.

It was housing secretary in 2019, Robert Jenrick, who convinced then-incoming prime minister Boris Johnson to include the target to end rough sleeping in the Tories’ manifesto ahead of the election. Jenrick admitted to The Big Issue last year that the party had “got it wrong” on rough sleeping in the previous decade as austerity drove people to the streets.

Given the position at the time, it was an incredibly ambitious target – and that earned the respect of homelessness experts.

Dr Andrew Connell, policy manager at The Salvation Army, told The Big Issue: “It’s absolutely fantastic that the UK government came out and said this, let’s be perfectly clear about this. It’s a very ambitious statement but absolutely all credit to them for saying that.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Alexia Murphy, chief executive of youth homelessness charity, Depaul UK.

“I won’t diss what the government has done in the last five years, I think there’s been some amazing achievements,” she said.

But, ultimately, the Tories fell well short of their target and there is little sign of falling homelessness, going into the next general election.

The Big Issue has asked homelessness experts, academics, charities and politicians to look back at the missed opportunities and the failures that stopped people living on the streets for good.

The government didn’t capitalise on the Everyone In scheme

One of the true ironies of Covid is that while the pandemic changed the world as we know it, it also offered a golden opportunity to end street homelessness for good, perhaps a better opportunity than any government could have hoped for.

The Everyone In scheme was a directive from the government to ask councils to bring in everyone out on the streets or at risk of sleeping rough to protect them from the spread of Covid-19.

Around 37,000 people were supported through the scheme, which mobilised local authorities, homelessness charities and support services to move people into hotels and other emergency accommodation left empty due to lockdowns.

As far as everyone The Big Issue spoke to is concerned, it was an almost unimaginable triumph.

Speaking to the Big Issue in October 2023, Centrepoint’s head of policy, research and campaigns Alicia Walker said: “Everyone In was fantastic. It was such a great policy. And it showed that it was possible that we can end rough sleeping and it showed that the government was on track to meet its target.

“But it happened in the context of a pressing and very obvious concern that touched on all of society and the government had to respond immediately. They’ve not so much rowed back since then but I’d say they have dropped the ball.”

Depaul’s Murphy added: “Everyone In was a great success. Without a doubt, it was an incredible example of what can be achieved and everyone works together. But it was for a crisis. People are homeless, they’re not hotel-less. And hotels don’t make homes.”

Everyone In was a crisis intervention at a time of emergency. It saw the government remove structural and systemic barriers, such as providing shelter to asylum seekers and migrants, that have since been put back in place.

Osama Bhutta, director of campaigns at Shelter, said: “It’s outrageous that the government is at risk of missing its rough sleeping target because of its own inaction. It could have built on its progress as we came out of the pandemic but instead has left more people to end up on the streets.”

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Renters have not been protected from homelessness

The Renters Reform Bill was supposed to make it through parliament to axe no-fault evictions and offer greater protection to renters.

Instead, thousands of renters have received eviction notices over the last five years without landlords being required to give them a reason.

No-fault evictions, also known as Section 21 evictions, are a leading driver of homelessness and the failure to remove them from the statute book has proven to be at odds with the goal of tackling rough sleeping.

Low-income renters have become increasingly vulnerable in the last four years due to local housing allowance (LHA) rates.

Almost all the experts The Big Issue spoke to cited the failure to increase LHA rates as a major factor in rising homelessness.

LHA rates are intended to ensure housing benefits which help low-income tenants cover rents for the bottom-30% of rented homes on the market.

But rates were frozen between 2020 and 2024 and left renters facing increasing housing costs and insufficient income to keep up.

It also left tenants with few choices if they need to move home and made it difficult for organisations supporting rough sleepers to find them a permanent home in the private rented sector once they have been helped off the streets.

That’s why chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced LHA would rise in April 2024, although it is slated to be frozen once again from 2025 onwards.

Speaking before that rise, Dr Andrew Connell, policy manager at The Salvation Army, said: “It seems that if you’ve if you’ve got one part of government saying we need to end street homelessness, and then you’ve got another part of government – the DWP or the Treasury saying, ‘Actually, we’re going to do something that makes the private rented sector, less accessible and less affordable.’

“Those two objectives are not aligned to each other. It’s completely out of kilter now with actual rents in the private rented sector.”

The Big Issue’s blueprint for change is calling on the next government to scrap no-fault evictions and to unfreeze local housing allowance rates going forward.

Removing the £20 universal credit uplift

The disruption of the pandemic saw hundreds of thousands of people turn to universal credit to get through and the government increased payments by £20 a week.

The £20 uplift lasted until October 2021, reducing the amount people on a low income receive before the cost of living crisis started to bite.

Universal credit has long been accused of failing to keep up with living costs. The average gap between benefit payments and the actual cost of covering the basics is £35 a week for a single person, the IPPR recently reported.

The problem is particularly acute for people under the age of 25 who are entitled to less than four-fifths of the award that someone over 25.

Centrepoint’s Walker said: “We’re in the worst inflation crisis in decades. We’ve got the cost of living crisis, we’ve got all of these problems, but we’re sort of doing the opposite of Everyone In. The reversal of the £20 uplift has a huge impact on young people especially.

“The reverse of that uplift in the context of emerging from a crisis into a financial crisis means that more people were made homeless. The crisis emerging from the pandemic is so much worse economically but the support just is not there for homeless people. And neither is the willpower to do anything about it.”

Has the political will to end rough sleeping been there?

With delivering Brexit and the levelling up agenda the big issues back in 2019 and Covid swiftly taking over in 2020 before the cost of living crisis followed, tackling homelessness has never been top of the Tory agenda throughout the last four years.

Add in the fact the government of today is very different to when Johnson took charge in 2019 and the constant upheaval and chopping and changing among housing and rough sleeping ministers hasn’t helped matters.

Between 2010 and 2024 there were 16 housing ministers with an average of less than a year in charge.

Centrepoint’s Walker said political will was one of the reasons why the government had fallen short of hitting its target.

“The problem is that it’s not the top priority for the department, homelessness, rough sleeping especially, it’s just not the top priority,” said Walker. “There are so many things that come before it. And so when it comes to the fact that ending homelessness has to be a cross-departmental piece, no one department is really owning it and taking it forward as a priority. And that is a problem.

“The political mess means that vulnerable people as a whole are always going to fall through the cracks. But homeless people are definitely going to fall through the cracks.”

It’s impossible to tackle homelessness without homes

The housing crisis is nothing new – successive governments have failed to build enough homes to keep up with the UK’s rising population.

It’s an issue that is at the core of sky-high house prices and rents – both of which hit record-highs over the last five years.

The government set a manifesto target of building 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s and it has managed to deliver more homes than recent Westminster regimes with a peak of around 235,000 in 2022-23.

The trouble is that very few of these homes were for social rent – the most affordable housing tenure.

Shelter and the National Housing Federation estimate that 90,000 social rent homes are needed each year. The Big Issue’s blueprint for change is calling on the next government to build more social and affordable housing while it is in power.

And the number of homes needed goes up every year in which not enough are built.

Centre for Cities estimates that Britain needs to build 442,000 homes over 25 years to bridge the gap. Compared to European countries, it is missing 4.3 million homes with the think tank pointing the finger at restrictive planning rules.

Jimmy’s chief executive Mark Allan said: “While renting and buying is expensive and accessing social housing is almost impossible, people are going to end up homeless. Unless there is a plan to build lots of genuinely affordable housing and bring down the cost of buying and renting genuinely, then people will continue to end up homeless.”

As Osama Bhutta, director of campaigns at Shelter, put it: “The only way to end homelessness for good is to build a new generation of truly affordable social homes with rents pegged to local incomes.”

Sticking to the hostile environment

The government has been vocal about its stance to bring down immigration but one long-running ‘hostile environment’ policy has undoubtedly made the goal of ending rough sleeping virtually impossible.

The no recourse to public funds policy prevents thousands of people across the UK who are living with an immigration restriction from claiming state support. In practice, this often forces people into destitution on to the streets and limits the funding that support services can access to help them.

Elizabeth McCulloch, St Mungo’s policy manager, told The Big Issue the end of the £28m protect and vaccinate funding was also a missed opportunity on the money front.

That signalled the end of the government’s increased spending on homelessness during the pandemic, she said, and left local authorities to find the cash to support people affected by NRPF.

“I think for us, that was the end of the pandemic enhanced offer that we saw. The big difference was the directive from government,” said McCulloch.

“I think what we saw with the end of protect and vaccinate is that there was then this void, where it left a degree of ambiguity around what the offer was for people affected by NRPF and then, crucially, also a lack of specific funding.

“So we were already seeing an inconsistency in the approach before the end of protect and vaccinate, but that was further exacerbated. And of course, that also then reduced the offer for UK nationals as well, although it had particular impact on non-UK nationals.”

Toni Warner, Single Homeless Project’s director of services, said the London charity is now seeing more people needing their help who cannot access state support.

“We see increasing numbers of people without recourse to public funds coming particularly to our crisis homelessness accommodation and the level of funding to cover rent has rapidly reduced since the protect and vaccinate money ended.”

Neil Parkinson, co-head of casework at fellow London charity Glass Door, added: “Even though Everyone In did not continue after pandemic restrictions were lifted, there have been some lasting positive steps for this group in terms of improved pathways for immigration advice. Nonetheless, for rough sleeping among this section of the population to really be tackled, it would have required more housing options for those in the process of having their immigration status resolved.”

Slow on rolling out Housing First

Housing First is often spoken of as the solution to end rough sleeping.

While it is not the silver bullet or panacea it is often portrayed as, giving someone who is sleeping rough a home and wraparound support to keep it is a proven model for helping some of the most vulnerable people off the streets for good.

It has been widely adopted in Finland, where it has played a major role in the country becoming one of only two in Europe, alongside Denmark, where rough sleeping has been decreasing in recent years.

While there are hundreds of small-scale Housing First projects across England – and Scotland has committed to making it the default to street homelessness – the Conservative government has been running three pilot schemes in Greater Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands.

And, arguably, the model was put through its paces in a sense during the pandemic with the Everyone In scheme offering an imperfect test bed for the idea.

So has the idea been adopted widely enough across England at speed?

Jimmy’s chief executive Mark Allan said: “Housing First is a good thing. And one of the reasons it’s a good thing is because the level of support offered is high.

“The challenge with Housing First is you need constant supply of one-bedroom flats to keep moving people into so it does have limits. We’re not being quick enough, but the problem with Housing First is it’s an expensive model.”

Lesley Howard, the national homelessness lead for charity Change Grow Live, agreed. She said: “We know that Housing First works.  It absolutely works and it’s been proven. But you’ve got to have the properties to put people in.”

Ending rough sleeping is expensive

The Tory government is currently spending £2 billion over three years on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.

That’s a lot of money and works out at around £650 million a year, just down on the £750 million a year that was committed during the early days of the pandemic.

“They have put money behind it, to some extent,” said Dr Connell.

But to move beyond managing homelessness and towards ending street homelessness for good is an expensive business and the funding has diminished in value over time as it has not increased with rising inflation.

And some local authorities – such as Kent County Council and Devon County Council – have been looking at axing non-statutory homelessness services to cut cash in recent months as they look to make ends in recent months.

While other councils have warned the cost of temporary accommodation has left them on the brink of bankruptcy.

Recent research from Centrepoint found youth homelessness alone costs the country £8.5 billion a year.

“It’s never going to happen,” said Centrepoint’s Walker. “The financial commitment isn’t matching the actual cost in the first place.”

Rick Henderson, chief executive of Homeless Link, the membership for frontline homelessness organisations said changes are needed to make support services more sustainable.

A survey Homeless Link carried out in 2023 found that almost a quarter of homelessness accommodation providers had seen a decrease in funding since 2021.

The number of services has fallen by a third since 2012 from 1,362 to 911 with the number of bed spaces available to people experiencing homelessness is down by a fifth over the same period to 33,093.

Henderson said: “In the long-term, it’s clear that the way in which the homelessness support services are funded needs a major overhaul, giving them the stability to embed the kind of consistent, person-centred support that we know is most effective in helping people leave homelessness behind.”

It takes a longer-term view to end rough sleeping

The successes of tackling street homelessness and Denmark and Finland did not happen overnight. It took decades of building and sourcing housing, changing cultures, putting support in place and a society-wide investment to get to that point.

For the Tory government to achieve the same in the space of four or five years was incredibly ambitious, particularly when emergency action has been the focus rather than wider prevention.

The Everyone In scheme may have opened doors for entrenched rough sleepers at the start of the pandemic but a failure to prevent others taking their place since then has been the ultimate failure. That’s due to a focus “on short-term crisis-focused interventions”, according to Homeless Link’s Henderson.

Some of the experts The Big Issue spoke to said going all the way back to education may be necessary to tackle rough sleeping and prevent people from ending up on the streets. And that’s a job that goes beyond a five-year parliamentary term.

Jimmy’s chief executive Allan said: “If you’re talking about prevention, then you have to go way back. If you can generalise and say that most people that end up rough sleeping have experienced early trauma, you need to go back to that point to prevent that early trauma from happening.”

Change Grow Live’s Howard agreed: “Prevention should be right back in schools and talking about trauma, and addressing that trauma so that people don’t start to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.”

It’s not just about England

One potential resource the Tories have failed to tap into is making the most of the union.

The Salvation Army’s Dr Connell said that as homelessness is a devolved issue, it offers the opportunity to test out ideas as part of a “policy laboratory”.

There are differences in how homelessness is tackled between England, Scotland and Wales with the latter two devolved countries further along in providing Housing First as a default response to rough sleeping and in favour of rent controls to tackle rising rents, for example.

It is telling that Prince William’s Homewards programme has opted for a UK-wide approach as it aims to tackle homelessness over the next five years – beyond the government’s rough sleeping target.

“I think it is really important that all four UK home nations – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – should learn from each other when it comes to addressing homelessness and rough sleeping,” said Dr Connell. “Because homelessness is a devolved policy area we effectively have a policy laboratory for homelessness.

“I think all four nations could benefit from looking at this and saying, ‘What’s going on there? What are we learning?’”

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A council has been accused of “tarting up” a station with £200,000 plans to put steel panels over arches used as shelter by rough sleepers.

Bradford Council is carrying out work, funded by Network Rail, to cover 10 arches outside Forster Square station. Planned after the council decided “anti-social behaviour has become an issue”, the Big Issue can reveal the budget for the work could reach £200,000.

But the plans have drawn ire from the leader of a local homelessness charity. “As usual, Bradford Council has got it wrong again,” John Tempest, director of Bradford Soup Run, told the Big Issue.

“What steps have been taken to ensure that those who will be evicted will be helped into housing, and shouldn’t they have done this first?

“Just think how much good could’ve been done with the £200,000 they’ve earmarked for tarting up Forster Square in preparation for the City of Culture.”

Information disclosed to the Big Issue through a Freedom of Information request revealed the budget for works – covering “screen panels, gates, lighting, general condition improvements to the location, design team professional fees and maintenance” – has “been agreed with Network Rail to not exceed £200,000”. However, the council refused to disclose the precise estimated costs.

Bradford Council said its outreach teams visited the arches every day to offer support to those sleeping rough.

Cities across the UK have attracted controversy for installing “hostile architecture”. One tour in Manchester offers a glimpse at the locked gates, covered shelters and removed benches which exclude rough sleepers from public spaces.

The X account Hostile Design chronicles the measures taken by local authorities across the globe, from counterintuitive benches to spikes over flower beds.

From a Church in Rivera, Uruguay pic.twitter.com/VBx1i705Mt

— Hostile Design (@hostiledesign) May 16, 2024

A Bradford Council spokesperson told the Big Issue: “Helping people off the streets is a key priority for the council all year round. The support we offer ranges from emergency accommodation to planned moves into permanent, supported accommodation, resulting in successful long-term tenancies, alongside improvements to people’s health and financial stability, and the re-establishing of relationships.

“The arches by Forster Square are visited on a daily basis by the council’s homeless outreach service to offer support and assistance to anyone who needs it. The council will continue to work with homelessness agencies and local charities to ensure those currently using the arches have the support they need to address health and wellbeing issues and access accommodation.

“As part of improvements to Bradford Forster Square station including an additional platform, the condition of the arches outside the station is also being addressed. Network Rail, who owns the arches, has agreed to fund a scheme for Bradford Council to further enhance the area with new lighting and greater security following ongoing reports of anti-social behaviour, to create a much-improved public realm.”

Network Rail declined to comment, but confirmed it is funding the work.

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