Homelessness in England has risen by 26% in the past five years

AARON IS HAVINGNGOBB a bad day. It is 7pm and foggy in Manchester city centre, the temperature is just above freezing and the late-December streets are eerily quiet. The 34-year-old’s decaying teeth and soiled fingers are evidence that he has been sleeping rough “on and off” for three years. He is begging for £17 ($21) to pay for a hostel for the night, or he will be sleeping in a doorway again.He is one of about 9,000 people in England likely to go without much warmth or shelter this winter. Although rough sleeping accounts for only a small fraction of the country’s growing problem, it is the most visible part of it. Add the many more placed by local authorities in temporary accommodation, and in all 354,000 people in England have no home (responsibility for housing is devolved). In the past five years their number has increased by 26%, according to data from Shelter, a charity. This mirrors the trend in America, where the latest annual count of the homeless was the highest ever.Homelessness is the product of the complex interplay between the housing market, the benefits system, immigration and broader social ills. The Labour government, in office since July, has set a lofty goal of “end[ing] homelessness for good”. In December it increased local-government funding to tackle it during the coming fiscal year by 28%. Greater Manchester is a useful case study, because Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor since 2017, has made reducing homelessness one of his central aims.He can point to some progress. In the 12 months to October the number of rough sleepers in Greater Manchester’s ten boroughs fell by 24%, from 148 to 112. (In London the figure rose by 34% over a similar period.) Paul Dennett, the mayor of Salford and Greater Manchester’s homelessness tsar, attributes the success to the city’s “a bed for every night” initiative. Each night, this makes available 550 beds for people who would otherwise sleep rough, at a cost of about £5.5m a year. Some £2m comes from the local National Health Service board, as the beds help keep the homeless out of hospital.Immigration, especially via the asylum system, complicates the task. Anul, a 29-year-old Sudanese man sleeping in a tent outside Manchester’s gothic city hall, says he was recently granted asylum 18 months after arriving in Britain. But in December he was evicted from accommodation paid for by the Home Office at 28 days’ notice. In the past year some 3,500 people have ended up sleeping rough after leaving such digs; single men such as Anul fall well down local authorities’ priority lists for housing. In Manchester Mr Dennett repurposed a community centre to help alleviate the problem by putting in 40 blow-up beds.Under pressure from local authorities and s, the Home Office has extended its eviction-notice period from 28 to 56 days, on a pilot basis until June. That aligns it with legislation obliging local authorities to provide shelter to people facing homelessness within eight weeks. But as the Home Office has sped up the asylum process in order to reduce its own accommodation costs, it has strained local authorities’ housing resources. Over the past year councils have assisted 22,000 recent asylum-seekers who had left Home Office accommodation.The biggest difficulty is the precarious state of the broader housing market. In June 123,000 families in England were living in temporary accommodation—&s, hotels and short-term lets—a rise of 43% in five years. That increase largely reflects people leaving privately rented homes at the end of their tenancies. The government has promised to end no-fault evictions (whereby a landlord can evict a tenant without having to give a reason), but it cannot prevent landlords from selling up, as many have. Last year Manchester created a “Good Landlord Charter” that it hopes will reduce evictions.For people counting every penny, finding permanent housing can be a daunting task. Bobby, a 50-year-old former construction worker, used to live with his mother in a housing-association bungalow. Six months ago, after her death, he was evicted; he now lives on the street. The benefits Bobby receives will not pay for a permanent home. People like him are in competition with young professionals for private rentals; and the cap on housing benefits, at 30% of an area’s prevailing market rent, is not enough for many folk to afford a decent home.Homeless people tend to have complex needs, too. Some 25% of people assessed as being homeless have a history of mental-health problems. Many without their own roof are fleeing abusive relationships. Bobby was hopeful that, in time, the local authority would find him a home. But there are 90,000 families on the waiting list for social housing in Greater Manchester; and 1.3m across England.The most effective long-term way to reduce homelessness is to lower the cost of housing by building more homes. Mr Burnham has promised to build 10,000 “truly affordable” social homes by 2028. The government has said it wants 1.5m new homes of all tenures to be built during this parliament but has not set a specific target for affordable ones.Being down and out does not necessarily mean being down. All the rough sleepers spoke to in Manchester were remarkably optimistic. Yet Deborah Garvie from Shelter, a charity, says that the doors to decent housing “are firmly shut” for many of England’s homeless people. It will take years of effort to open them.