Believe in People
Believe in People explores the realities of addiction, recovery, and stigma through conversations with those who’ve lived it.
Featuring voices from across the recovery community - individuals with lived experience, frontline professionals, public figures, and policymakers - offering unfiltered insight into the personal and societal challenges surrounding substance use.
Hosted by Matthew Butler and produced by Robbie Lawson, this award-winning series is a trusted platform for dialogue, empathy, and change.
🎙 2024 British Podcast Award Winner - Best Interview
🎙 2025 Radio Academy Award Nominee - Best Speech & Entertainment
🎙 2024 Radio Academy Award Nominee - Best New Podcast
Believe in People
#31 - Matt Downie MBE: Crisis, Ending Homelessness, Rough Sleeping, Sex Work, Hostels, Affordable Housing, Rogue Landlords & The 1824 Vagrancy Act
Matt engages in a profound conversation with Matt Downie MBE, Chief Executive of Crisis, the national charity for homeless people.
Together, they delve into Matt's role as a dedicated advocate for change, exploring how his diverse experiences across prominent organisations have deepened his understanding of the multifaceted issues surrounding homelessness and social injustices. The discussion delves into critical topics such as homelessness, rough sleeping, and the intersectionality of issues like sex work, shedding light on the urgent need for more affordable housing and comprehensive support systems.
Matt also gives his candid thoughts into the persistent challenges posed by rogue landlords and examines the historical and contemporary relevance of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.
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🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” by Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)
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🎙️ Facilitator: Matthew Butler
🎛️ Producer: Robbie Lawson
🏢 Network: ReNew
This is a new original recording. Hello and welcome to the Believe in People podcast. I'm Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator. Our guest today is Matt Downey, the CEO of Crisis Homeless Charity. We'll explore the issue of homelessness and discuss the stigma associated with it. Additionally, we'll touch upon multiple disadvantage, priority need, the Vagrancy Act and the importance of affordable housing. First of all, can you please introduce yourself and give us a summary of your career to date?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, hi, my name's Matt. I'm Chief Exec of Crisis. I've been Chief Exec of Crisis for about 18 months, but worked here eight, nine years. And I basically always worked in the charity sector and have worked on three issues, homelessness, child protection, and autism, all of which are issues that really matter to me in One way or another, through some form of personal connection. And I guess I'm one of those lucky people that gets to get paid for doing something they love.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant. No, thank you very much. And thank you again for your time on coming onto the podcast today. I'm going to jump in with my first question and ask, what are some of the challenges faced by individuals experiencing homelessness in 2023? And what potential solutions are available? Quite a broad question, of
SPEAKER_02:course. Well, so homelessness in 2023 is a bit different to how perhaps 20 years ago people might talk about it. Because I think for a long time, and often mistakenly, people would see homelessness as happening to some other group of people who are somehow disassociated from mainstream life and a lot of the stereotypes of who... But in 2023, I don't think anyone doubts that homelessness is very near as a circumstance and as a kind of a risk to a much, much larger part of the population. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people every day facing the risk of not being able to pay their rent. And the cost of living crisis has exacerbated that. The really, really awful lack of housing that used to be a kind of southeast of London issue but now is everywhere. That's sort of taken homelessness to a slightly different place. But actually, that's just about perception because it's always been the case that everyone who's ever experienced homelessness is quite simply somebody who... when the worst happened in life, they didn't have the safety net, the personal relationships, the social capital to mitigate that risk. And the vast majority of people who are at risk of homelessness get helped by their friends and family, and that's what happens. But when you don't have that, and there isn't a safety net around you that's provided by the state, and there's no housing available, that's when homelessness happens. And if you are... in that situation for any period of time, you start to accumulate support needs and you can end up with really very, very serious mental health and other issues. And today, three people will die because of homelessness, tomorrow and the day after, and so it goes. So in some ways, it's never been different, but the scale is going up because of the lack of housing, cost of living crisis, local authorities really struggling as well to consistently provide services. So, yeah, in one sense, it's a bleak picture because the numbers are going up. We reckon 300,000 households in some form of homelessness this year. But we've also never known more than we do now about the solutions to it. What is it that prevents it? What is it that would solve it for individuals or for cities or local authorities or countries? So we face this strange kind of world of extremes where it's a massive and growing human emergency, but also we just need to look at the really now quite solid evidence about how you go about tackling, preventing and ending homelessness.
SPEAKER_00:I saw something recently that I thought was quite interesting saying that, I guess, the... homelessness is could could be helped and the argument that they had was during the pandemic anyone who was homeless was housed so it is possible for the government to do it but there's just a choice not to do it what's your take on on that and i guess the homelessness situation and how different it was during the pandemic
SPEAKER_02:yeah so the pandemic was was um an exception, an anomaly to how homelessness is normally responded to. I remember talking to Louise Casey, who was the government's kind of czar and kind of advisor on homelessness, ahead of that first, we didn't call it lockdown, I think. It was the precursor to that when people were sort of not going into offices anymore and all that kind of stuff. And I said to her, where do you think people are going to get help? who have got nowhere to live, particularly rough sleepers. What on earth are we going to do about this? And she was brilliant. She went about setting up the Everyone In scheme in England and sent an email out to all local authorities that said, it was a Wednesday, and she said, get everyone off the streets by Saturday. And she had no legal power to do that. There was£1.6 million to do it, divided across every single person. local authority in England, so no money. And she wasn't even a minister. She was just a, or even a full-time civil servant. But there was something about the urgency and the vision to that. And really the organising of it was all about thinking there's a deadly disease and we don't quite, no one understood it at that stage, but we must protect particularly rough sleepers from it. And fast forward a few weeks and 37,000 people were in hotel rooms. By the way, the government had said that there were only 3,000 rough sleepers. So that tells you something. So something remarkable happened that went without any argument whatsoever that said, yes, there is energy to tap into. Yes, there is urgency. And actually just someone turning up with some leadership said, really makes a difference but it's not right to say that um over that period of time homelessness was ended or you know everyone was given what they needed what actually happened was 37 000 people who were at risk of a virus were not exposed to that virus um and genuinely that was amazing and and what you can probably say about it now is that um when we saw um home particularly rough sleeping as a health emergency you can really prompt effective action but then of course it all just fizzled away yeah um and we're back to much higher levels of of homelessness and rough sleeping than before then um and the the kind of What would have been lovely would have been a kind of, right, that was the start. Now we push on. That's
SPEAKER_00:what I was going to say. Surely that would have been the opportunity to push on. And then, like you said, it's just kind of fizzled out. Well, so it fizzled
SPEAKER_02:out in England, but not in Scotland or in Wales. So the same scheme with some slight differences happened in Scotland and Wales. And... That was taken as the moment to kind of step up a gear. So in Wales, for example, they overturned the whole history of homelessness legislation in Wales and said, right, from now on, everyone who's sleeping rough has a legal right to accommodation. And that had never been the case beforehand. And it was just a continuation of the everyone in scheme in Wales. And in Scotland, they already had a great plan for dealing with homelessness anyway that was already in place. And they just chose to sped up some of the things that were going to take a bit longer. So if you remember in a pandemic, no one could sort of congregate in shared airspace in buildings, which means night shelters are no good at all. or kind of day centres. And Scotland was already planning to move from that to a much more kind of personalised, dignified provision, but they just did it faster. So much like most of the story now on homelessness, England is way behind Scotland and Wales. For what reason? Well, both Scotland and Wales have had for a period of years now quite a so so um homelessness and housing policy is devolved to those governments so they set their own policies and do their own thing um and they've chosen to do their own thing in a way that is uh learning the lesson of anywhere around the world that's ever done really well on this issue which is you you you plan backwards from where you want to get to and you say right we want Everyone that needs somewhere to live to have somewhere to live. And if everyone that needs support can get support, then we can start designing homelessness out of our system. And now both countries are looking at prevention measures as well. There's new legislation coming in both countries to prevent homelessness. And I guess there's just a sense of can-do. There's a sense of... I mean, clearly the issue is smaller because the populations are smaller, but you're now half as likely to be homeless in Scotland than in England. And that's not because poverty rates are lower. They're not. They're higher in Scotland. It's because they've put together different laws. Local councils have... In Scotland, they had... It's a technical thing, but they call it a five-year transition, rapid rehousing transition plan, which is deeply off-putting language. But what it really means is, right, we're going to shut down our hostels and night shelters, and we're going to plan for having enough actual real housing, one-bedroom accommodation, two-bedroom family accommodation for the people that need it. instead of waiting for people to have to spend months and years qualifying for it whilst they accumulate needs in hostels and things like that. And it's really transformative stuff and actually much cheaper than having to spend lots of money on supported housing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:thank you.
SPEAKER_00:So we're from a drug and alcohol service. What efforts have been made to advocate for increased funding and resources to provide long-term care stable accommodation for individuals who are in recovery, while also addressing potential relapse risks and ensuring, I suppose, non-discrimination in the housing process as well. I mean, I
SPEAKER_02:think in terms of where drug and alcohol addiction and recovery meets homelessness, what you're really talking about is What are the funding streams and how is that arranged for that cohort of people? We're down to the bare bones now. We really are. Years ago, there was a dedicated funding stream for that, and you could access that. Now, what you see is a growth in unregulated supported accommodation for a lot of the people that you're describing that we see. And actually, there's a lot of really dodgy provision out there, and we're running a campaign at the moment called Regulate the Rogues to... get those people out of the market because it's giving the good people a bad name and it's providing real squalor and kind of misery to people. Some of the people we work with who, you know, not just homeless, but with a number of different support needs will tell us that, you know, they've been living in a kind of, in a one bedroom, you know, so-called supported accommodation because of those support needs, but not getting those needs met at all. And the landlord is charging enormous, unlimited housing benefit and a kind of support charge on top to the tenant as well. So it's pretty bad out there, I would say, at the moment. And you guys know better than we do on that. But in the end, you know, one of the things I think is a real innovation for the future for us to arrange ourselves around is the housing first model. Because you know, if you take a harm reduction approach to those issues and you normalise the housing that people are in, so it's your own home and you get intensive support, but it's your choice as to how you engage with it. The evidence shows people sustain their tenancies much better than they do in kind of temporary accommodation and the engagement with the support services is much better. And so a sort of truth that we should have held onto for years, which is that most people can deal with their problems better if they've got somewhere of their own to live. You start reasserting into the system of dealing with drug and alcohol problems and mental health issues and pretty much anything else.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Do you think people that use drug and alcohol are discriminated against at the point of accessing accommodation?
SPEAKER_02:So people are discriminated against on almost every basis when it comes to accessing accommodation. If you look at housing associations, local authorities, private rented accommodation, There is every chance that if you're somebody who has drug and alcohol problems and has received support services, you are less likely to receive the housing you need. The same goes for affordability checks. So we've reached this mad situation where housing associations that were set up 50 years ago specifically to help people on low incomes or who are homeless are saying, unless you've got enough money, you can't live here. You have people who are discriminated against because they're on any form of benefits. You have people discriminated against if they have an offending background. And there was a really nasty piece of legislation in 2012 called the Localism Act, which allowed local authorities to just write a list of what they would consider as things that are a barrier to people going into work. housing in these situations and you could say well if someone's had rent arrears or got a drug or alcohol problem or whatever you like then you've got less of a priority so it's systematic and that's why you see a kind of revolving door of people you know on the streets in hostels or in short term accommodation so the very people that need what stable housing gives you are the least likely people to get it
SPEAKER_00:yeah one of the things that we see on i suppose on social media anything news related uh related to housing is i guess in the comment section is okay but where are where are where's the accommodation coming from where are these houses coming from yeah do you have the answer to that question
SPEAKER_02:well first of all i think i think you need to sort of unpack it a little bit because if it so when someone says quite often um i hear people say things like um Well, if we give housing to people who are sleeping rough, then families with children won't get the priority or the housing that they need. Rough sleeping has gone up in this country, but do not tell me we don't have enough housing to house everyone that's on the streets. I mean, even in the city with the biggest problem, which is London, there are 1,000 people every night. Don't tell me in a city for 8 million people we can't find 1,000 units of housing. We can. I would also say, quite honestly, if you were in a queue for A&E, and the person behind you had their legs hanging off, you would get out of the way and let them go first. That's how I feel about this, because people genuinely do die because they have nowhere to live. And so that just doesn't wash that argument. But it is true overall that there isn't enough housing. So in the short term, obviously, that means we need to do everything we can to make sure that People that really need it can access the housing that is available. So housing benefit needs to go up because it's been frozen for nearly four years now, which means that private renting is impossible. Housing associations in England only allocate about a quarter of their properties to homeless households. That is just not good enough. It's double that in Scotland. But we need more homes. We're losing homes because of right to buy, where social housing is just sold off and not replaced. But we need it to be built. We need more social housing to be built. We need more empty homes to be brought into use. We're now in a situation where it's got to be a sort of everything strategy. So every available tool that local councils or government have got, they should be using because... You know, it's not only kind of human misery that comes out of it, but it's also costs of fortune to keep people in temporary and emergency accommodation. It's far more expensive than just mainstream rent. Yeah. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. People engaging in sex work to pay for a night in a hotel, committing crimes in the hope of being taken into custody, forming... unwanted sexual partnerships to secure a bed for the night are some of the desperate measures taken for people to fulfill their immediate housing needs. Are there specific criteria or guidelines in place to determine priority need when it comes to involving women engaged with sex work? Well,
SPEAKER_02:just to say, first of all, what you're describing, I see all the time. So you're less likely to be homeless if you're a woman. But you're more likely to be worse off when you are homeless if you're a woman. And the violence and exploitation and assault that people face is a kind of stain on this society. And how I was in one of our services in North London where a lot of the people that come to us are... trying to escape a life of living in a crack house is modern slavery. It's just disgraceful. And the impact of that is not just homelessness. It is the sorts of trauma that will take a lifetime of care to even cope with. And priority need really only applies to people now who have got dependent children. Most councils now are putting children pulling up the drawbridge to almost everybody else. And so it is true that if the system is functioning properly, anyone who is in danger or is putting themselves in danger because of their homelessness or is in an emergency situation where they're at risk of harm should be helped immediately. But that is not the system we've got. What you've got is rationing. And when rationing happens... crazy kind of almost kind of perverse decisions start coming out of housing officers who are saying look we just don't have the stock to give to people we don't have enough to go around so i'm afraid or however upsetting your situation is um it's a no and quite often people come to our services when they've been told no by others in that situation. We did campaign for and got a change in the law during the pandemic so that anyone who's escaping domestic abuse is automatic priority need, which is great. That's really good. But that's hard to prove, and particularly people who are living in modern slavery situations and all the complexity that comes with that. they don't get the help they need.
SPEAKER_00:Was that only in the pandemic or is that something that has stuck since? It's stuck since, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It was a really good campaigning win for us.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think the government are doing enough to provide help to those who are non-English speaking and at risk of homelessness? Because that's something that we see as quite a big problem. area in Hull a lot of the people that are homeless often we have a breakfast club that we have in the morning a lot of the people that come into that are from the Polish community as well is that something that you see?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah so regularly we see people who are homeless because of some form of immigration status so that includes you know routinely people who are absolutely entitled to be here and through to people who have no recourse to public funds, who are entitled to be here but can't get any help whatsoever because of that status. And increasingly, we're seeing people who were invited here in refugee schemes. So Syrians, Afghans, and Ukrainians who have fallen foul of the system. And so you cannot have a... a plan a commitment to end any form of homelessness whilst having a discriminatory immigration system that says when you're in need you're not entitled to it you don't often see things working in homelessness where you think that looks like it's intended to cause homelessness You know, most of the things that we have big complaints about, like housing benefits, you know, being too low. I don't think someone sat there in a treasury saying, right, we're going to cause homelessness. But no recourse to public funds almost feels like an exception to that. Because the evidence is absolutely clear. And particularly when it comes to rough sleeping. I met a guy who'd been a taxpayer for 20 years. And he didn't even know he had a no recourse to public funds kind of flag on his immigration status. And the pandemic hit, he tried to get assistance and he got absolutely nothing and he was sleeping rough. It's disgusting. And so, yeah, the government could switch this off at any given moment if they so wanted to and make sure that anyone that needs help gets it. I mean, we've had people... dumped on us by some of the immigration detention centers you know saying you know well just go and see crisis because there's nothing else for you you're not entitled to anything you know this is this is pretty raw and awful stuff for an increasing number of people
SPEAKER_00:What is the charity stance on the Vagrancy Act and its impact on individuals experiencing homelessness? And are there any advocacy efforts or partnerships in place to challenge or reform the Vagrancy Act and promote alternative approaches to addressing homelessness?
SPEAKER_02:Well, the Vagrancy Act is a bit of a pet topic of mine. So it will never be the biggest thing in terms of affecting the largest numbers of people, but in some ways it's the most important thing we'll ever work on because it's It says something about a country to have the circumstance of homelessness as a crime. It says something about how you view people who are in need to say, actually, we're going to punish you. And it stems from 200 years ago when people were coming back from the Napoleonic Wars and people didn't like seeing wounded veterans in the streets. And there would seem to be vagrants and so was born this idea of people being criminalized for it. And at the time, people like William Wilberforce, really amazing people were saying, this isn't right. We shouldn't be punishing people for poverty. So it's not even a new idea that it's outrageous. It was outrageous at the time. 200 years later, we have run a campaign to abolish the Vagrancy Act and something very strange happened where we got cross-party agreement abolish it and in a piece of government legislation they have abolished it but they haven't commenced that piece of legislation
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_02:so in theory it's no longer a crime to be homeless in this country but in practice it still is and since the decision to put it into the bill but not enact it a thousand people have been prosecuted under the vagrancy act so it's still alive and well And it's still the worst excess of kind of, you know, I feel like it's kind of state abuse, I have to say. You know, and I was talking this week to government officials about it and saying, just paint me the picture of why you think it's useful to prosecute people for poverty. And they were saying, well, you know, what about those businesses that you know don't want people sleeping in their doors yeah yeah i understand that but what's going to happen to the individual well actually what what are you expecting to happen if someone's fined how they're going to pay the fine someone needs to be in the city center because that's where outreach services find them or where services are and you send them miles away what's going to happen to them and frankly if you if you just completely trash someone's dignity in this way, how are they going to recover? And there is no answer to that. So the Vagrancy Act was repealed in Scotland years ago. And of course, it's made no difference. There's not been some outrageous kind of ballooning of vagabonds roaming the streets. It's disgusting. It's anachronism. And we will continue fighting it until it's gone.
SPEAKER_00:I couldn't believe it was still a thing. When we was putting these questions together and I looked at it and I saw Vagrancy Act 1824, I was like, that can't still be a thing nearly 200 years later. And coincidentally, as I was coming here today, I was in the underground, an announcement came on and it said about begging, being a crime and not to give money as it encourages the behavior. And that came on through the PA system. And I was like, Jesus, I can't believe that here we are in 2023. And I just found that coincidental based on what we was doing here today. And I thought, to say on the timeline, it's a crime, I was like, Jesus, I never even knew begging was a crime. I can't believe it's even seen that way.
SPEAKER_02:Completely baffling. So it's seen that way and it's because homelessness is seen that
SPEAKER_01:way. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And it's because people are seen as an underclass and somehow they've created their own situation and it's their own fault and therefore some form of punishment meets the crime of having chosen to be like that. And if you've ever met anyone... who's experienced homelessness, you immediately see how kind of Kafkaesque and perverse all of that is. I remember talking to a guy who'd been banned from the centre of Blackpool and prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act. And he'd gone to live in the woods somewhere outside the centre and couldn't get access to anything he needed. You just think, You know, this is so far over the line of kind of right and wrong, let alone kind of practical.
SPEAKER_00:It makes no common sense at all. Absolutely. It's like you were saying, like, how do they even pay that fine? You know, the homeless. But it's the dehumanizing element. And I've worked with a few homeless people, well, former homeless people. And one of the things that always stands out to me, and they've all said the same thing, is that... you don't remember the people that give you a fiver or a ten edge. And he said, don't those faces just blur into one? He said, the people that you remember, the ones that take the time to come down to your level and look you in the eyes and talk to you as a person. And it goes back to what you were just saying then of the dehumanising element of, okay, yes, you've lost everything here out on the street. And also, this is a crime. Bugger off. It's just, I can't get made around it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I
SPEAKER_00:really
SPEAKER_02:can't. Yeah, I guess it speaks to something. I guess, you know, the general public do feel uncomfortable about seeing people, particularly sleeping rough. And they should feel uncomfortable. Absolutely, yeah. Because it's awful. But that doesn't mean you criminalise it or somehow try and kind of wish it away by sending people, you know, away from... they need so yeah it's an ongoing fight I found a couple of years ago I found some lever arch files from a campaign that had been run in the 1980s about this and I was reading through it all and it was all the same arguments then there was an attempt to get rid of it then as well
SPEAKER_00:so
SPEAKER_02:we fight on and it's sort of like I say Kind of totemic, this one,
SPEAKER_00:I think. It's going back on that same sort of topic as well. There was an increase in crimes to homeless people. I think it just seems to be in the news a lot. I don't know if it was just on a national level, but definitely on a local level, homeless people having their sleeping bags set on fire. There was a video, I think, in Hull of someone actually jumping on top of the homeless person in the doorway, and it goes back to, again, the idea of Just not seeing that person as a human. Yeah. That's what I really struggle with, and I think that's what upsets me a little bit, is that disconnection, and it's almost like it's just a casualty of society, or it's okay, or they've brought it on themselves, as you said, to be able to do that. I suppose, how often are you encountering crimes to homelessness, specifically homeless people here as a charity?
SPEAKER_02:We actually did a bit of research on this a few years ago, and... you're 17 times more likely to be a victim of crime if you're homeless than the rest of the population. Wow. And the crimes that you do experience are... They are mostly, I would say, hate crime. Yeah. And... I'm sort of very careful about that in wording it because hate crime is where there's an aggravating kind of prejudicial factor behind the kind of motivation of the person who's committing the crime. And that is what's going on. It's people who, for some reason, feel like it's legitimate to target people who are homeless. And this is... I would say these two things are linked. So if society is saying people are criminals, under the law people are criminals for being homeless, what message does that send to people who might consider, you know, actually I can see someone in a doorway who's trying to sleep and I'm going to kick their head in or urinate on them or set their sleeping bag on fire. It happens all the time. And it's happened so much that you realise it's... Like it's a thing. This isn't an isolated thing. It happens. And it happens because there is something that needs undoing in the kind of psyche of how we approach people. We tried a couple of years ago to get it categorised as hate crime, but the Law Society wouldn't support us on that one. But we tried because we asked a whole lot of our clients... members, we call them here, a lot of our members, do you think it's a hate crime? And they said, you know, spend a night in our shoes and you'll see immediately that it's a hate crime. This is people who despise us for our circumstances, you know, so.
SPEAKER_00:And it's funny, I've only just made that connection there of going with the vagrancy acts of them being criminals for being homeless and therefore the people that are committing these, as you've said, hate crimes, and I do agree with you on that one, it's okay because these people are criminals because they're based in this doorway. Or they probably deserved to be homeless because they have some criminal background or something. That's the first time I've really made that connection as
SPEAKER_02:well. And it all goes full circle because what we also asked in this research is about rates of people reporting what's happened to them to the police. Yeah. And of course... virtually no one does. And if you ask why, well, first of all, people will say, why would I go to the police? Because the police are telling me I'm a criminal anyway. And why would I go to the police? Because they're never going to investigate it. And that's really sad. And I have to say, we did an amazing piece of work with the National Police Chiefs Council to draw out the good work that does happen because there is good work that happens between local councils and police and homelessness agencies and try and get this kind of out of the kind of victorian nonsense we see into what what really works you know what's the kind of multi-agency work that really does help people because that's the answer
SPEAKER_00:yeah so i guess that the big question here is what is what is your plan to end homelessness
SPEAKER_02:Well, in 2018, I wrote a big book called Everybody in How to End Homelessness in Great Britain. It took me a year. And it's nearly 500 pages long. And it's got sections for England, Scotland, and Wales. And I think, broadly speaking, the majority of what needs to happen is policy change. And policy change to... So it's still the case... that local councils will only help certain types of people who are homeless. So until it's everyone, then we don't have a system that's a proper safety net. So that's a policy choice. Similarly with the other things that stand in people's way when they really need help. There's a lot of legal changes needed there. I also think that the way in which we think about homelessness prevention is absolutely key. So there aren't many social problems where you not only sort of have quite a good idea of the sources of homelessness, but in many cases, you know exactly when it's going to happen. I was in Liverpool prison a couple of weeks ago and they know the exact moment that a lot of their inmates are going to become homeless. It's four o'clock on a Friday afternoon for the release date that they have. And if, you know, for that you can apply that to the asylum accommodation system you can apply it to the care system as well um let alone hospitals and other things so so you kind of there are really obvious steps that need to be taken in in the wider kind of public sector to say right we know we're now going to organize ourselves so that no one is made homeless out of the state so The law needs changing. The way public services are arranged needs changing. Housing supply is the really obvious kind of... We're not going to get out of this situation until... We need around about 90,000 additional units of social housing a year. I would also say that the way the homelessness sector itself goes about its business needs to change. And obviously, I would say crisis is part of that. There are two main elements of that. One is the way we talk about the issue. So some of the things we've talked about today about the stereotyping of homelessness actually have come from our sector. If you look at fundraising materials going back decades, it's no surprise that there's Christmas fundraising that goes out with stereotypical images of alcoholic men with beards in their 60s or whatever. We've reinforced the wrong stereotypes. Yeah. Probably a bigger issue though for our sector is to make this transition away from emergency accommodation and deploy the housing first model as the alternative. So all of these things add up to really quite obvious solutions and there's good evidence for them in different parts of the world where they've, you know, you can take the housing stuff and say, well, who's done that? It's the Austrians, it's the other, you know, blah, blah, blah. You can take housing first, you can name different countries. If you look at homelessness legislation, there are different countries, Scotland being one of the best actually um and when you package it all together over a 10-year period of time it would cost just over 9 billion pounds but over the same 10-year period of time and by the way this is pwc who did the figures so it's not just me over the same 10-year period it would save 26 billion pounds So there's no moral case, there's no economic case for not doing it. It's simply a matter of leadership and determination.
SPEAKER_00:I do go back to what you said, that point of homelessness. I do find that interesting that we still have release dates on Fridays from prison. The day when all services shut, that's the one thing that has baffled me for years now. We shut at five o'clock on a Friday and we get so many people released from prison on Friday. And on a Friday. So we often find that they are released from prison. They're not given a methadone prescription. More likely to use over the weekend. By Monday, it's too late. It's already happened. We talk about alcoholism being, you know, one drink not enough and two being too many. It's the same for drug use over the weekend and stuff. So why that? They say to understand and know that point of 4 p.m. on a Friday. And it would be so... Am I missing something? Surely it would be so easy to just do... Monday released it so people can get to services that are predominantly shut on Saturdays and Sundays.
SPEAKER_02:I think there's... Not very often you look at something and you think... well, that's just common sense to stop it. Yeah, yeah. You know, and it won't solve every problem. No, no, of course not. But it will stop creating lots of problems. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I raised the same point in the prison I went to the other day and they said, yeah, yeah, that would help. That would help.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yeah. That's what I mean. It's just, it's so obvious. It's like, why isn't it being done?
SPEAKER_02:I think, and I think, you know, if you make it a Thursday or a Monday. Yeah. I don't, you know, I mean, you can't keep someone longer in prison than they're. Of course, yeah, yeah. But, but. I mean, it's totally doable, isn't it? The other thing I would say is that local councils shouldn't... It's obvious, isn't it? Don't shut housing options at four o'clock
SPEAKER_00:on a Friday. What challenges does the sector face in addressing the stigma around homelessness? And can you describe the stigma that you've seen firsthand?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I would describe it slightly differently than stigma. I think the... I think what you see is that the kind of cultural general public understanding about what homelessness is, is really, really highly, it's highly individualized. So when you ask the general public, and we did do this a few years ago, did a sample of 8,000 people, how they understand homelessness and what it is they think about when they talk about it, they say, oh, it's individuals. And not just any individuals, really highly specifically described individuals. So it's, yes, it's older men. And actually, you're always going to have these people. They are just, they're just hopeless. Some might even choose to be homeless. And there's a little bit of how people will say, oh, maybe it's some women who are escaping violence. You get a little bit of that in the story, but primarily women. It's highly sort of individualized stories about men. And then you ask kind of where are you getting, you know, you investigate where people are getting that from. And I guess one of the things you see is that all the stories we tell about homelessness are individual stories. And even the good ones, where we say, look at this person who's kind of rescued themselves from the situation. They're almost always individual. What we very rarely do is talk about the actual structural reasons that people end up in that situation. And that's because it's a bit more boring, frankly. And, you know, homelessness charities communicating about our issue often. Won't get much pickup if we do that. But it is, we've sort of colluded over many years in this kind of really highly sort of individualized story about it. And I think what it's about is trying to instead trigger the right responses from the public about the issue to say, you know, this is an issue that's about things I can identify. So if you say to somebody, Do you know what? There's a constant pressure in people's lives with high rents, low wages, cost of living. And it's led a lot of people to the brink of homelessness. So we need to step in to make sure it doesn't end up in homelessness. You get a better response about the issue than if you say, what do you think about poor so-and-so? And what can we do to stop that happening in the future? So we've got, I think, a responsibility to reframe our issue today. and sort of instead of kind of just being offended by how the general public thinks about it try and change that and sort of go to where they are on it and yeah and really as a sector think very seriously about our own responsibility in doing that because almost every news story that's ever about homelessness has been placed by a homeless organisation trying to get it on the news so how does it or as it's described, and how do we tell better stories.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, thank you. What advice would you give to people perhaps worrying about something they've heard today regarding homelessness, if anything?
SPEAKER_02:Well, the earlier the better with homelessness, and I think we fought really hard for the Homelessness Reduction Act, which gives local councils duties to help people before it happens. And also, if you're worried about someone right now on the streets, Call 999, call your local council, call Streetlink. And if it's someone that you yourself are worried about, whether it's yourself or your family, get help as soon as possible. And you might have to fight for it a bit because councils are really struggling. But come to amazing organisations like yours and like Crisis and don't sit on it because it will just get worse.
SPEAKER_00:Brilliant, thank you. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that you want to bring attention to? Anything that you're working on at the moment that you want to talk about as either individual or as a charity? Yeah, I suppose the big thing
SPEAKER_02:that I guess we feel we now have to get ourselves involved in is actual housing delivery. So many of the places that we have services and when, you know, cities all over England, Scotland and Wales are the people that we're providing really good support to, we simply can't find housing for them in the private or social sectors. So we're now having to find ourselves thinking about how you deliver the housing. So around the corner from where we are today, we're going to be opening a lettings agency to recruit landlords so that we can get some of our members into that housing. And I guess it's the thing that's on my mind every day, which is that we're going to have to sort of slightly break new ground as to what homelessness charity is.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:funnily enough, it goes all the way back to the conversations that people were having, you know, 50, 60 years ago when the housing association sector was set up, which is to say there are all these people in housing need and no one's building any housing for them. or giving any housing to them. So we're going to have to get our hands dirty and roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves. So I guess, yeah, just to say, I think that we won't be the only ones thinking this. And yeah, if anyone wants to jump in and talk to us about how we do this together, it's a shared problem.
SPEAKER_00:In Hull, I don't know if it's the same anywhere else, but we've had a lot of new housing estates pop up in the city and the general sort of consensus is that so many of them have to be council properties as well is that a sort of done thing here or is that
SPEAKER_02:so the the thing that says any new development needs to have a certain number of affordable and social homes is being abolished
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_02:it's called section 106 yeah um and it's not been abolished yet but it's going to be but that's that's good i mean it's it's really solid when it happens you know when a good development happens and there's there's always you know some form of social and affordable housing. That's how you create mixed communities. That's how you stop ghettoizing kind of people. It's the right thing to do. So it sounds like some good things have happened in Hull.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And again, just these last few questions that I ask all my guests. So completely lighthearted, nothing serious. And my first question for you, Matt, is what is your favorite word? My favorite word? Do you
SPEAKER_02:have one? I've always loved the word humble. Not because I particularly am, but because it's lovely and rounded and sort of is what it says.
SPEAKER_00:Humble, I like it. What's your least favourite word? I don't know. See, I love this. Some of the real difficult questions I've fired at him today and he's been boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I know I ask him, what's your least favourite word? He's like, oh, I've really got to think about it. I've got it. My least favourite word is arsenal. Fair enough, good one. Tell me something that excites you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I... I get really excited by a sort of change in people's expectations. So working for Crisis for nearly 10 years, I see people who are like the younger people that come to work for us. They have completely different expectations about work. what they want out of life, what they want out of their employer. Very demanding. Same with my 16-year-old daughter. She would absolutely know tolerance for the sorts of stuff that probably we all grew up with as being normal in terms of the way different people are treated and stuff. It's really exciting because if it stays like that, give it 10, 20 years and this country will be amazing. Radical changes, yeah. Absolutely. Tell
SPEAKER_00:me something that doesn't excite you.
SPEAKER_02:Um... Can I come back to that? Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:yeah, absolutely. I thought he was going to say the complete opposite, where people don't change their ways or something. That's often the case with everyone, isn't it? People spin it. Tell me a sound or noise that you love.
SPEAKER_02:My favourite noise is... And I'm sorry, I feel a bit like... It sounds like I'm work-obsessed. But my favourite noise is listening to a media officer sell a story to a journalist.
SPEAKER_01:Okay,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. And with passion, talking about why the public are going to care about something. And when you hear it, and when you hear someone being convinced on the other end, I just love it. Do you? Yeah, I really, I could sit and listen to that all day. Aside from that, I'm a big Prince fan. And yeah, that kind of funk and soul.
SPEAKER_00:Sound or noise do you hate? I
SPEAKER_02:hate the noise of my phone. Yeah. It's going to be something busy. Yeah, it's increasingly not good news. I hate the noise of my phone. It gives me a dread. What profession of the neuron
SPEAKER_00:would you like to attempt?
SPEAKER_02:I've always... Well, I started off wanting to be a journalist. I thought I could be quite good at
SPEAKER_00:that. I think with the whole selling of the story... I know, I know. I
SPEAKER_02:can see you being good at it. I know. But actually, I would really like to be a writer. Yes. And you know, everyone says they've got a book in them. I know what mine is. I just don't have time to do it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a shame.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You might find it in retirement.
SPEAKER_02:Maybe.
SPEAKER_00:One day. Maybe, yeah. What profession would you not like to do? What's the worst job you could imagine doing for yourself? I always say it's not a slate to people that do the job, but just something that isn't for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think there are some things that I just don't think I would be cut out to do. But where I see it, I just think it's incredible.
SPEAKER_01:So
SPEAKER_02:if you see an amazing probation officer, for example, I think, thank God for you. Like that is someone with a calling. with human skills with empathy emotional intelligence and with clarity and really often underpaid and overworked and i think yeah that that is i couldn't do it i don't want to do it i wouldn't be any good but my god i'm glad you exist yeah i like that uh
SPEAKER_00:and then lastly if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates
SPEAKER_02:uh well done you gave it a good
SPEAKER_00:go brilliant Thank you very much for coming on the Believe in People podcast, Matt. I much appreciate your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Cheers. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Believe in People podcast, don't forget to check out our other episodes and hit that subscribe button. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Our name is CGL Hull. That's C-G-L-H-U-L-L. We're on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and Google Music. So please like and subscribe to receive regular updates. You can also search for Believe in People podcast on your favorite listening device. And if you could leave us a review, that will really help us with getting our message out there and rising up the daily podcast charts.
