Centrepoint interview: "the people responsible for our country were talking about homeless people like criminals”

Helen Clarke

Centrepoint is the UK's leading youth homelessness charity supporting almost 14,000 young each year. The charity campaigns to end homelessness by 2037 and Centrepoint's Head of Support and Housing (North) - Joe Lomas, says "no young person chooses to be homeless".

Here he answers our questions.

What support do you receive from local authorities or the combined authority and is it enough?

Centrepoint works collaboratively with Manchester City Council to get young people facing homelessness across Manchester the support they need.

The council like many others across the country is doing what it can with the resources it has been given, but decades of chronic underfunding from central government have stretched services to breaking point.

Many councils are having to make impossible decisions around who gets support. Nationally, local councils across England face a £300 million shortfall in youth homelessness funding, something the Labour government will need to address.

What are the common misconceptions of young people who have become homeless and how do we combat them?

Many people believe that homelessness is a ‘lifestyle choice’ and when it happens to a young person it is down to their ‘bad’ or ‘unruly’ behaviour, but no young person chooses to be homeless.

Most of the young people we work with come to us following a family breakdown, for reasons outside of their control.

Combatting these misconceptions isn’t easy, but giving young people the platforms to tell their stories and amplifying their voices on issues that have affected them is an important step. The more we educate people on the issues that affect homeless young people, the better.

What work does Centrepoint do in Greater Manchester and who is involved?

Centrepoint provides wrap around support for young people aged 18-25, our housing support team works with around 1,000 young people a year from our Manchester base and our helpline supports many more young people with advice and guidance over the phone.

We aim to provide each young person with the support they need. This could include support from our rough sleepers team who go out to the streets to identify and engage young people.

The team are then also able to offer short term Centrepoint bed spaces whilst working with them to identify longer term solutions. It could include support from our tenancy support, rent deposit and resettlement services which help people find and sustain a stable home.

A lot of the young people we work with have multiple and complex needs. Others may require work and learning interventions, activities, grants, translation and life-skills training.

Do you feel there is a stigma around homeless people and has this improved in recent years?

We still have a long way to go to break the stigma surrounding homeless people. Harmful rhetoric and laws proposed in the last year which would've essentially criminalised people for being homeless has not helped in changing the narrative.

How could we expect change if the people who were responsible for our country were talking about homeless people in this way and treating rough sleepers like criminals?

We are hopeful that the new government will help shift the dial and reprioritise how these experiences are talked about in the public domain and those affected are supported.

What impact if any do you believe a Labour government will have on your work or the factors affecting those that become homeless?

If the government’s commitment to build more affordable homes and develop a strategy to end homelessness comes into fruition, we should be on the way to reducing homelessness.

But the devil will be in the detail, specifically when it comes to seeing how government tackles youth homelessness.

Young people face different challenges and have different needs to adults experiencing homelessness so it’s important that our approach to supporting them reflects this.