Homelessness Prevention and Rough Sleeper Strategy policy consultation

Overview

Consultation Summary

We are developing Havering’s Homelessness Prevention and Rough Sleeper Strategy 2020-2025 and need your help. This will be our most important strategy for years as we focus on enhancing the service we deliver to the town’s most vulnerable people.

We want to help our families and their children, we are focussed on supporting single people and we will go the extra mile to ensure nobody sleeps on the streets of Havering by 2022.

As a Council we are ambitious but we need the help of our partners and the community to achieve the targets set out in this consultation.

Introduction

We are committed to ensuring that every local authority in England should be seen to eradicate rough sleeping, by enhancing our services to support and protect those who are homeless at this particularly vulnerable time of their lives. We aim to learn the lessons as to why this happens, and plug as many gaps as possible where we have not been able to intervene quickly enough.

This strategy will be based on collective insights and local intelligence that has witnessed homelessness in Havering and will be a live working document that is reviewed every two years to ensure we are delivering on our objectives.  

We value your knowledge as residents, tenants, partners and staff of Havering who know better than anyone how important it is that nobody has to experience the trauma of homelessness.

We are in the process of writing a new strategy to cover the period 2020-25 and we would welcome your comments and feedback. 

This consultation will be your opportunity to tell us how we can provide help to people in Havering who approach us in times of difficulty when they are at risk of homelessness or are already homeless. Homelessness and rough sleeping is a traumatic experience for anyone and at times it causes irreparable harm to a person’s mental health and well-being.

This draft document sets out our commitment to anticipate and prevent homelessness as early as we can and do everything within our powers to break the cycle of repeat homelessness that so often is exacerbated in communities across the country.

Our vision

In developing our homelessness prevention strategy we welcome the input of our key voluntary, public and private partners and stakeholders, to help us deliver strong ambitions for the delivery of this strategy.

We have begun the process of this consultation by focussing on 4 priorities:

1. Managing homelessness demand through effective pathways
2. Supporting vulnerable residents
3. Ending rough sleeping
4. Increasing the supply of affordable housing and reducing the use of temporary accommodation.

Why your views matter

We are consulting because seeking views on what you think of our proposals, or information about how the proposals might affect you or someone you know, is really important in making sure that we have taken important evidence on board before making a decision.