Government should declare a national homelessness emergency and take notice of the city region’s action plan, according to the mayor of Greater Manchester.
In a speech to mark two years in the job, Andy Burnham will say hundreds of people dying on UK streets last year amounts to a ‘humanitarian crisis’.
And ministers should mirror the recently declared approach to tackling climate change.
“Surely, when hundreds are dying every year on British streets, (declaring a homelessness emergency) is exactly what is needed. People in doorways is in danger of being accepted as just an inevitable and unchangeable fact of modern life.
“It can’t be allowed to happen,” he is expected to say on Wednesday.
“This is a humanitarian crisis of our own making – and entirely fixable. We need to approach it with a new mindset and a new urgency.”
Mr Burnham, who has pledged to end rough sleeping in the city region by 2020, will reiterate calls for his flagship A Bed Every Night (ABEN) scheme to be extended for 12 months.
Its ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘joined-up’ approach should be embraced by the government for other parts of the country as it will be cost-effective for public authorities, he will say.
The scheme – which has provided accommodation and support facilities in each GM district since November – had been extended through to the end of April to give combined authority bosses time to come up with plans to make it a more permanent arrangement.
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It is understood that discussions are ongoing on how costs will be split between local authorities and the mayor’s office.
A fresh phase will involve a ‘broader range of organisations’, the combined authority has said.
“I have long felt that an effective respite service could pay for itself in part or even in full by reducing the call on other public services. If we can prove that, it would be a game-changer in the homelessness debate,” the former MP, who contributes 15 percent of his salary to the mayor’s homelessness fund, will say.
“We need a society that picks people up as soon as they fall rather than picks up the pieces after they have been left shattered for months.”
The Labour mayor will be speaking at the Mustard Tree, a homelessness charity in Manchester city centre, two years since he took up the mayoral role.
He is expected to say: “The reason why I call for the declaration of a homelessness emergency to tackle rough sleeping is that it would give a clear signal to public bodies everywhere to prioritise this issue and start acting preventatively.
“There is no reason at all why other areas can’t set up a similar service (to ABEN). Devolution has made it easier for us to focus but it is not a pre-requisite.
“There is evidence that a small percentage of people have come to GM because of the higher level of provision compared to other areas.
“The answer to that is not to scale back what we are doing but for other places to do the same.”
