Written evidence submitted by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee [RSL 004]

HCLG Committee visit to William Collier House (Rough Sleeping inquiry): Summary note

On 10 December 2024, we visited William Collier House, YMCA Brighton’s supported housing unit. The visit comprised informal discussions with individuals who were making use of the building’s services at the time, as well as a staff tour of the facility.

This note provides a summary of the lived experience testimony that was shared with us during the visit.

Participants had all had experience of rough sleeping prior to receiving support from YMCA Brighton, as did some YMCA staff members we met. Contributions have been anonymised to protect the privacy of those who shared their experiences with the Committee.

Causes of rough sleeping

Participants discussed a wide range of factors which led to their ending up sleeping rough in Brighton. These included:

Broader structural issues:

• Cost of housing in the area -  participants talked about the high and increasing cost of renting in Brighton, which they attributed to wider structural factors such as a proliferation in second home ownership and short-term lets such as AirBnB;

“The rent was far too much; £950 a month is just too much.”

Participant

• One participant estimated that the Universal Credit they were receiving had only covered 60% of the rent for the previous place they had been renting, while others described landlords in the private rented sector refusing tenancies to those on benefits;
• Another participant described being on the waiting list for social housing for 7 years.
• The lack of suitable temporary accommodation in the area, with some participants describing poor quality accommodation with damp and mould.

Long-term personal factors:

• Some participants had grown up in care (“in the system”) and had experienced a lack of opportunities which had led to e.g. poor literacy skills.
• One participant discussed the traumas involved in growing up in care, including loss of parents and siblings early in life being traumatic events which contributed to poor mental health and self-medicating through substance misuse.
• Childhood trauma and disruptive home lives were identified by one participant as the key reason for people ending up on the streets and dealing with addiction:

“Right now, another generation of children are growing up; 30% are growing up in poverty. The people who are not being cared for today are going to end up in the YMCA in 20 years’ time.”

Staff member with experience of rough sleeping

• One staff member said that they had seen multiple generations of the same family pass through William Collier House.

Short-term/immediate personal factors:

• Mental and physical health issues – several participants discussed the problem of undiagnosed conditions, for example brain injuries (resulting from substance abuse), or of neuro-divergence (e.g. autism), with one participant citing a 2-year waiting list for a mental health diagnosis.
• Some participants described specific traumatic events being a trigger in ending up sleeping rough on the streets, particularly parents or other close family members passing away.
• Substance misuse and addictions stemming from all of the above was cited as a key factor leading to financial destitution and individuals being unable to afford to sustain tenancies.

Challenges to getting help

Participants spoke to various challenges they had encountered while seeking help to find accommodation. These included:

• Having “chaotic” lives and living environments which had impacted on their ability to access support when it was most needed, and ending up “stuck” in very difficult and complicated situations well beyond their control, unable to move on to more permanent tenancies:

“I’ve got people fighting my side, but there’s no one I can speak to about moving home [away from temporary accommodation]. It’s like hitting a brick wall but I can’t ‘lose it’…it’s difficult when there’s fights and drug dealers smashing doors in…I just want to move on to my forever home now”

Participant

• Limitations of the benefits system, for example being classed as “fit to work” reducing the amount an individual is eligible for from Universal Credit (acting as a disincentive to get into work and being able to afford accommodation);

• Difficulty in finding timely and appropriate support for health conditions – particularly mental health and addictions:

“It is incredibly difficult to get sober. If you have five, six, seven things [in your life] wrong, it’s never going to work. The percentage of people getting clean [from rehab] is around 5%.”

Staff member with experience of rough sleeping

• But also physical health – e.g. opioid addictions developing due to back pain, in one case.

• Previous poor experiences with support services, including gatekeeping practices, making it hard to trust those offered by e.g. YMCA Brighton, as well as a general feeling of hopelessness;

• Certain services, particularly health services, refusing to offer support if they suspect drug and/or alcohol use:

“It feeds into the feeling of being rejected by the people who are meant to help you.”

Participant

•                                                                                                                             Several participants described an increasing sense of helplessness as they continued to struggle to find support, leading to feelings of being “trapped” and effectively giving up on trying to improve their situation over time.

“Half the time I was working I was still homeless, sleeping in car parks. I was getting up and having to pretend I was housed despite having a rucksack on my back all the time. You get trapped and lose the will…I’d lie awake dreading the next day.”

Participant

William Collier House staff also referenced common issues they had encountered in providing those sleeping rough with appropriate support which weren’t necessarily reflected in the participants who were present on the day, for example the challenges in supporting refugees whose first language is not English.

Staff also explained how feelings of despair and homelessness among participants, as well as e.g. verbal abuse from some residents, also affects staff morale, leading to a high staff turnover. They discussed how the constant pressure of dealing with “life or death” cases, where many cases “end up in the coroner’s court” can drive many staff away from the organisation over time.

“It’s hard having to watch a car crash in slow motion.”

Staff member

“What works?”

In the short term, participants expressed their gratitude at how the support offered by William Collier House provides for very basic needs which they are unable to access elsewhere while sleeping rough:

“You can go in, have a shower and change of clean clothing; a few hours in the warmth. Psychologically, you feel a hell of a lot better after that.”

Participant

“It’s hard as a woman being on the street…it was very unsafe. I was in fear; this place helped a lot.”

Participant

For longer term needs, an employee of YMCA Brighton, who had himself had prior experience of substance abuse-related rough sleeping, discussed the effectiveness of person-centred models of support in tackling his issues both with addiction and holding down long-term accommodation. This included, for example, offers of support which catered to the specific interests of the individual – whether that was experience of full-time work; volunteering or other means of developing skills and confidence such as participating in workshops.

Staff described the range of life experiences people had had prior to sleeping rough and that different groups had different support needs requiring different approaches, whether that was those with substance addictions; veterans; women or refugees/asylum seekers.

“Successful centres don’t have a one-size fits all approach.”

Staff member with experience of rough sleeping

One participant described the additional difficulties being a woman in a male-dominated space brought, with only 10 of the 94 residents of YMCA Brighton at the time of the visit being women, highlighting the need for support specifically targeted at the population sleeping rough, or at risk of doing so, who are women.

“I’ve struggled with the amount of men and being in the minority, and I’ve felt unsafe.”

Participant

Recommendations to Government

Towards the end of the day, participants were asked that if they had one piece of advice to give to the Secretary of State’s Inter-Ministerial Group on Homelessness, what this would be. A number of suggestions were put forward, including:

• Improving support for the stage between coming off the streets into emergency/supported accommodation and settling down in permanent housing. Participants described the vulnerability of falling through the cracks while housed in emergency, supported or temporary accommodation if they are housed in an unsafe, unstable or unsuitable environment or if there are barriers to support for other needs such as addiction during this stage in the process:

“It’s trying to find that middle ground on the journey [to permanent housing]. There’s an ‘in-between’, that’s a process of learning how to live. Learning the basic needs for myself and getting the community around you.”

Participant

• Reviewing the criteria local authorities must check against when providing temporary accommodation support. In particular, the concept of being “intentionally homeless” if found to be using substances while in treatment for addiction was cited as an unreasonable obstacle to receiving the required help.
• Improving the medical options available for those trying to beat addiction. Participants discussed increasing difficulties accessing opiate treatments for beating heroin and other hard drug addictions, with, for example, Brighton described as only having twenty places available for Buvidal treatment despite evidence of its effectiveness in helping overcome addictions.
• Looking into how to better facilitate the re-opening of derelict/abandoned buildings to be used to temporarily house people who have no other option but to sleep rough on the streets. One participant mentioned changes to squatting laws in recent years which was seen to have taken away this option as an alternative to sleeping rough on the streets, as well as changes to laws around the ability to park trailers on green spaces further driving people onto the streets.

“If you use while in treatment you’re then intentionally homeless, so it’s another barrier.”

Participant

“You go to agencies and it’s like pass they parcel; they try and shove you onto someone else.”

Participant

• One individual described a situation where a local authority refused to offer housing support due to him not being able to prove a local connection, despite his son living in the area.

Further, staff members discussed the need for more comprehensive health support offers within establishments like William Collier House:

“We have a [site-based] health service but it doesn’t cover specialist rehab like community detox. We’re as creative as we can be with what we have to work with but unless there’s a major [health] unit, we’ll never get there.”

Staff

January 2025