Christmas won’t cheer Birmingham’s homeless Festive charity can't put roofs over heads

Ask the average worker, rushing to and fro from New Street, and most won’t give the homeless a second glance. This is not because we’re a callous lot — it’s because we’re used to this scene and many here, too, are struggling to make ends meet. Rent rises in this corner of England are among the fastest in the land, even as employment is down, and less than a quarter of us earn the London median wage of £44,370. Many here just don’t have the cash to help themselves, let alone pass on a fiver to some nameless stranger looking for a handout as they rush to get a train.

Visit Council House, the handsome Victorian headquarters of local government, and you’d probably hear a similar answer. Max Caller, called in by Whitehall after Birmingham’s effective bankruptcy, has been locally dubbed “Max the Axe” for his ruthless pruning of the city’s spending. The exact figure changes a lot, but hundreds of millions have to be found in cuts, or in council tax rises. Not that it’s surprising. Between financial mismanagement, a botched IT upgrade and an eye-watering equal pay settlement, Birmingham is a city on the edge. Beyond the £400 million headline, which has seen arts funding taken down to zero, and social care slashed. For its part, funding for the department that deals with homelessness has seen cuts of 28%.

You can see the paucity of authority care throughout the city. Beginning at New Street, it’s crept up the A-roads and down our arterial waterways. On canals you’ll find tents. Some are for sleeping; others for shooting up. On major ring roads, traffic lights are increasingly guarded by the most desperate. Suburban retail parks are much the same. For their part, some bus stops are also now homes. One homeless lad, at the Highgate interchange of Belgrave Middleway, had been there for so long that he’d even started tending to the weeds around the road’s intersection. Add to that the mass of people in temporary accommodation, hardly suitable for building stability or accessing consistency in care, and the problem is becoming more complex. “Society,” Hodge says, “is only as successful as the way it treats its most vulnerable.”

Given the desperate state of Birmingham’s accounts, it’s tempting to imagine that these problems could be solved with more cash. But with Rachel Reeves making much of Labour’s tough decision-making — she recently said all government departments need to find 5% in cuts — a wholesale abandonment of austerity seems unlikely. That’s even as the city currently spends about £2 million a month on temporary accommodation for the homeless.

To be fair, the Government isn’t totally oblivious here. Treasury grumbles notwithstanding, Labour has promised an extra £3 billion to build new houses. Beyond opening its wallet, Whitehall also plans to deregulate. All local authorities in England will soon boast “spatial development” strategies, while mayors will be able to take planning decisions without asking London for permission. These carrots come with sticks. Angela Rayner has made much of the mandatory housing targets Labour is set to impose on councils, with local leaders expected to identify ugly greenbelt land (the so-called “greybelt”) for new projects. If places like Birmingham still drag their feet, No. 10 has ultimately promised to overrule them.

These efforts are surely welcome — but in truth risk ending in failure. For starters, the social housing waiting list in Birmingham alone is 23,500 at the last count, and that excludes the 10,000 just waiting to get on the waiting list. Labour’s annual plan to build 300,000 houses nationwide suddenly sounds rather less impressive, especially when combined with immigration figures that, though falling, remain high. Another challenge involves money. It’s all good and well to pump billions into housing, but recall that councils now spend 42% less on services than they did in 2010. Then there’s the question of expertise: Birmingham finished just 40 council-developed units, leaving officials reliant on pricey (and dubious) HMO landlords. Ebenezer Scrooge: is that you?

Solutions are available. Birmingham has the highest number of empty homes in the country. Some of this is due to landlords or owners not being able to afford repairs. But near to where the cash-generating Commonwealth Games were held, hundreds of premium flats, meant first for athletes then locals, remain empty. More council mismanagement. And though elsewhere the council has clawed back control of other empty flats — the aim being to reduce homelessness and ease housing congestion, as well as stopping properties from being used for anti-social behaviour — could cash from the Treasury buy these up faster, mitigating future costs and helping those at risk of homelessness? There is, at least, a blueprint here. In 2020, as Covid-19 took hold, all street homeless were housed within a week, when unused hotels and hostels were suddenly converted to temporary accommodation.

Ultimately though, beating homelessness is about more than immediate tweaks. “The easiest part is putting rooves over heads,” Hodge says. “The hardest part is helping them [homeless] with the realities of life.” Left to their own devices and multiple occupancy residences for the homeless risk being ghettoised, defined by sex work and drug use. Experts like Hodge are eager not merely for more money — but also the targeted prevention of homelessness at source, and the good work and life opportunities to help people get back on their feet. That makes sense: though a lack of council cash is doubtless a push factor for those rough sleepers near New Street, there are pull factors too, from addiction and family breakdown to the cost of living. 

While he therefore wouldn’t sniff at more funds from Council House, and appreciates whatever help he can secure from Victoria Square, Hodge equally wants more thoroughgoing social change: boosted wages; better-paid apprenticeships and entry-level work; salaries in line with rocketing retail rents. These, he says, are the improvements that prevent homelessness in the first place. “Otherwise,” he warns, “you end up throwing money at the problem. It’s like smoking: we have to highlight the risks and hope to prevent [homelessness], but that means the government putting money into something that might not get immediate results.” 

For their part, Birmingham City Council’s leadership should start being louder. Certainly, local engagement can work: Greater Manchester has recently reduced street homelessness by 52%. In practice, that’s involved a “Housing First” programme to deliver long-term accommodation, and a “Bed Every Night” scheme for more urgent cases. Beyond the specifics, moreover, you get the sense that political engagement can really help here. Yes, Birmingham has an ambitious five-year council plan to reduce homelessness, as well as partnerships across the city. Then again, the only local councillor who dared condemn Caller’s cuts was promptly suspended. More to the point, pressure on Whitehall has proved successful elsewhere. Up the M6, Andy Burnham has been central in lobbying for more central government funding to boost homeless schemes across his combined authority.

Courage from Council House is doubly urgent now. Top homeless charities have written to Reeves to explain that homelessness could rocket still further. And while Lisa Nandy talks a big game on the need for charity, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport sounds ominously like she’s merely regurgitating “Big Society” nonsense of the Cameron era. “The charity sector can pick up the gaps but that’s because statutory services were not supporting or funding services,” is how Hodge puts it, noting that much of the sector’s funding anyway comes from local government. Considering how serious the problem has now become — not just here, but nationally, with over 300,000 people now assessed as homeless — it’s hard to disagree. 

Something, in short, must clearly be done. Especially now, as winter hits, and the homeless in their sleeping bags begin to shiver. Officially, after all, there are now 36 entrenched rough sleepers in the city, and these figures are bound to rise further. In the winter chill, I walk past one man wearing clothes barely more than rags, with a battered sleeping bag scarved around his neck. He’s hunched over, looking for nubs of used cigarettes on the floor. A charitable fiver from a fellow Brummie feeling “good will to all men” might help for a time. But something more substantial is needed too, long after the Christmas lights come down.