New Homelessness Action Group report makes recommendations to end homelessness in Wales

The Homelessness Action Group (HAG), established by Welsh Government, has released their second report on homelessness today.

The HAG is made up of 13 experts, including Clarissa Corbisiero, our Director of Policy and Deputy Chief Executive, and was set up to advise Welsh Government on the steps needed in order to end homelessness in Wales.

Welsh Government has accepted in principle the recommendations laid out in the report today. These are:

• taking a proactive and rights based approach to homelessness
• addressing the circumstances which can lead to homelessness, such as child poverty and Adverse Childhood Experiences
• ensuring that enough affordable housing is available so that adequate housing becomes something everyone should expect
• ending evictions into homelessness from housing which is paid for or supported by the state
• targeted prevention, which involves taking specific action to prevent homelessness among groups of people most at risk
• joined up approaches across public service to implement ‘pathways’ that support people to avoid homelessness
• extending prevention duties to all public bodies working in partnership to rapidly rehouse people who are at risk of, or are experiencing homelessness, so that homelessness really can be only rare, brief and non-repeated

A full list of recommendations is here.

In Wales, about two-thirds of recorded homelessness is now prevented by the hard work of local authority housing teams and social and private landlords

The HAG is now calling on Welsh Government to put together an action plan to take these recommendations forward, setting out an ambition to end homelessness together with the practical agreements on funding and how changes are paced over time

Clarissa Corbisiero said:

“Nobody should be without a safe, affordable and suitable home. The recommendations within this report, if implemented fully will help us end homelessness for good in Wales.

Homelessness is a public service issue. Housing associations want to continue to play their part, working with partners to prevent and alleviate homelessness wherever it arises.

The first step is to increase funding for the Housing Support Grant, which supports the vital services essential to preventing homelessness”.