Homelessness: no quick fix so it gets overlooked

HOMELESSNESS is taking a devastating toll on a hidden cohort of islanders, as waiting lists for social housing reach a 12-year high.

A 110-page report by the Guernsey Community Foundation, commissioned by Maison St Pierre, has revealed the depth of the island’s growing homelessness problem.

GCF social policy researcher Alex Lemon spent a year completing the document, outlining the causes of the issue in Guernsey and how it can be solved.

She found the key drivers of homelessness were increased private rents, under-regulated private tenancies, a lack of housing, an overburdened third sector, a lack of focus at government level, and an imprecise understanding of affordable housing.

In 2021, private rents in Guernsey increased by 20% while real median earnings increased by 0.5%. The average rent in the island is £1,660 per month, equating to 54% of median earnings.

Those that cannot afford the high rents are forces to rely on an unseen network of expensive and poor-quality housing.

‘In many respects, Guernsey is a housing last approach,’ the report said.

‘Generally, the approach taken here is to try to turn homeless people with high support needs into good – i.e. low risk tenants before they are housed.’

More than 300 people are on the waiting list for social housing, but as the cost of living and housing costs rise, there are fewer people moving out.

The States has agreed on a number of new housing developments, including Kenilworth Vinery, but it may not be until 2024 that any affordable housing is built.

‘The trouble with this is it is not an immediate fix and I think that is why it gets parked a lot,’ said Ms Lemon.

‘We need to be talking about it as a wider issue than building houses. I think what we need is an acknowledgement that there is a wider issue than a few people sleeping rough.

‘We, as a society, can be very cruel towards homeless people and make it feel like its their fault when that is almost never the case.’

The States recently agreed to debate selling social housing for 75% of its market value as part of the Government Work Plan.

‘I think that is a complete distraction. It doesn’t actually address the root of the problem which is not that people can’t afford houses it’s that the prices are too high,’ she said.

‘If you are going to sell our States housing when waiting lists are at a 12-year high, where are you going to put those 350-plus households if you are selling the houses from under them.’

Definition of being homeless needed to collect data

HOMELESSNESS is not mentioned once in the Government Work Plan, despite professionals thinking the issue is exploding.

Housing has been prioritised in the plan, consistently being considered one of the most urgent requirements for the island. But the issue of homelessness has not been explicitly addressed.

The homelessness report said the States must set a definition for the word in order for accurate data to be collected on the extent of the problem.

‘We do not know how many people in Guernsey are homeless, either in the traditional sense of sleeping rough or in the broader sense,’ said Alex Lemon, who wrote the report.

Social housing waiting lists and the number of people living in St Julian’s House give an insight into the scale of the problem but cannot give a complete picture. However this data, combined with that of the Women’s Refuge and Sarnia Housing, suggests that the number of people experiencing severe housing problems is rising.

‘Guernsey does not have a statutory definition of homelessness and there is no evidence that the States, when formulating housing policy, has ever attempted to describe what homelessness looks like,’ said Ms Lemon.

The Guernsey Indicators of Poverty 2022 report, published this year, said that the extent of the issue in the island was ‘hard to quantify’ and that attempts would be made to develop a method appropriate for monitoring levels of homelessness’.

The same paragraph was included in the editions published between 2015 and 2019.

‘No attempt has been made to define homelessness, let alone quantify it, in at least six years – if ever,’ said Ms Lemon.

‘Perhaps a definition is seen as too difficult, not important or not urgent, or a combination of all three.

‘When a problem is not measured it becomes easy to ignore.’