Local authority responses to homelessness

The support services received by the sample need to be studied in the context of the response of Newcastle City Council to homelessness, because the first contact that the authority had with most of the young people occurred when they made their homelessness application. This chapter examines the services that were provided from the time of this application to the point where a young person had been living independently for six months.

Newcastle, like many other local authorities, currently provides a range of services to meet the needs of homeless people. This response is in contrast to an initial reluctance by some authorities to meet the obligations placed on them by central government with regard to homelessness. The first major piece of legislation in this area was the 1948 National Assistance Act, which was eventually followed by the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and then further legislation, as discussed in Chapter One. In each case, the legislation consisted of central government introducing or amending statutory duties for local authorities. Historically, some authorities resented these obligations, which they saw as providing opportunities for undeserving homeless applicants to ‘jump the queue’ at the expense of deserving waiting list applicants (see, for example, Richards, 1992, p 130). As a result, authorities often sought to meet their obligations in a minimalist manner – for example, by offering very poor temporary accommodation to homeless households (Watchman and Robson, 1989, pp 38-9; Lund, 1996, p 85).

Two factors appear to have led to a more generous approach being adopted in more recent years. The first was a change to the view that homeless people were undeserving. Somerville (1999, pp 30-1) argues that this was a longterm historic phenomenon, which was influenced by developments such as the eviction of many families from private rented accommodation after the 1957 Rent Act, the displacement of households from properties that were subject to local authority slum clearance programmes, the showing of the documentary Cathy Come Home in 1966 and an increasing emphasis in social policy on achieving improvements to the welfare of homeless families.

The second factor was a change in the nature of local authorities, which became more political in the late 1970s and early 1980s.