No place to call home: how do you solve the rural homelessness crisis?

What image comes to mind when rough sleeping is discussed? Perhaps it’s a person taking shelter under a concrete overpass, or sleeping in an office doorway as commuters walk by. It’s probably not an image of someone hunkering down in a tent on the outskirts of a quiet village.

Homelessness in rural communities is just one of the issues that can all too easily be overlooked if regional differences in the housing crisis are not taken into account.

Bringing those differences into the spotlight is senior research fellow Jonathan Webb, a leading housing-policy expert at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

It was Webb’s research at the IPPR which revealed that rural rough sleeping had increased by 33% in the six years from 2012 to 2018, although he notes that the actual figure will be much higher because this percentage only accounts for official figures registered by local authorities.

“There’s not necessarily an appreciation that rough sleeping in rural areas is a real problem,” says Webb. “Rough sleeping is difficult in any circumstance, but in rural areas it has a very different dimension – you’re much more exposed to the elements, and you don’t necessarily have immediate access to any sort of shelter or support provision.”

This area of study has interested Webb for a long time: “If I had to pick one passion within housing policy, it would be homelessness,” he says, “because for me, homelessness is a manifestation of a failing of society.”

To find the right answers, policymakers have to consider the needs of different regions, rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, says Webb. In the case of rural homelessness, that might mean opening a new shelter – but not without also improving local transport links so that people can actually reach it.

Webb’s team at the IPPR has laid out an action plan for tackling rural homelessness. This includes a call on central government to develop a new national homelessness strategy with a commitment to “rural proof” all policy. The IPPR says this would be easier if a central rural policy unit was established in the Cabinet Office, focused on promoting rural communities. The IPPR also suggests that local authorities set up weekly drop-in sessions, “rural community homelessness hubs”, which would bring together relevant services to provide advice and support to those in need.

Rough sleeping in rural areas is just one reminder that the housing crisis reaches far beyond cities, with the IPPR finding that only 8% of the housing stock in rural areas is affordable, compared with 20% in urban parts.

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“The housing crisis is variable in different areas,” says Webb. “Someone living in a poor-quality house in the north-west of England has different problems – not better or worse, just different – from someone in their late twenties in London, who has an OK salary but still can’t afford to buy, and spends a lot of their income on rent.”

Coming up with a fairer way of deriving the value of land is one way to fix things, says Webb. “[Expensive land costs] cut out small- and medium-sized housebuilders who might be able to build housing to a better quality, and also local authorities who want to start their own vehicles.”

The IPPR believes that “the fire-sale of public land to the highest bidder should be ended” and “public land should instead be prioritised for the delivery of genuinely affordable and high-quality developments”.

“There are ways to put local communities back in control of housing,” says Webb. “For instance, community land trusts [a form of community-led housing which hold land collectively in a not-for-profit trust] give local communities more say on the type of housing which is developed. You could look at the aspects of community land trusts that allow people to have a say on development and regeneration, take those principles, and democratise the planning process.”

One thing that unites people in IPPR focus groups, wherever they live, “is a keen fondness for homeownership”, says Webb. “People tend to say: ‘It’s about stability, it’s about security, it’s about having control over what I do in my own home, even if it’s something as minor as being able to hang photos on a wall without getting penalised.’ But in some other countries – Germany, for example, which has very open-ended secure tenures – you can get all of those things without owning your own home.”

Attitudes toward renting may yet change in the light of research by Webb’s team, funded by a 2018 grant from the Nationwide Foundation, which was published in 2020. “We looked at the idea of living rent, which is essentially linking rents more closely to incomes,” says Webb. “This product would basically calculate your rent based on your earnings so you’d never pay more than a third of your income.”

Webb sees it benefiting the “squeezed middle”, especially key workers who can’t access social housing. The IPPR has also called on the government to increase the number of social rent homes in England and build 90,000 a year over the next decade.

Webb stresses the importance of taking a holistic approach and acting fast. He points to the government’s action during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic to turn hotels into shelters. “We’ve seen a government willing to take immediate steps to tackle things that were previously considered intractable,” says Webb. “It does show you can achieve something impressive if the political willingness and the resource is made available.”

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