"Nobody should have to sleep rough in Oxford.
"That’s a bold statement. It’s also been a longstanding ambition for Oxford City Council and is one of the priorities in our five-year plan to tackle our city’s housing and homelessness crisis.
"But what will that look like in practice?
"The Oxfordshire Homeless Alliance will play a leading part. Launched in April 2022 with an annual budget of £3.8m, the Alliance is developing a ‘housing-led’ service to prevent and reduce rough sleeping across the county. It brings together most outreach, accommodation and prevention services in a system-wide approach to tackling homelessness.
"When we say housing-led we also mean a new way of helping people. Until now, people experiencing rough sleeping would normally move from the streets to independent living in stages.
"Housing-led approaches like our Housing First model take a different view. The crucial first step is to provide a settled roof over someone’s head, without preconditions like engaging with treatment services. We can then put personalised support in place to help prevent a return to the streets.
"Housing First is a more effective way of helping people who find it difficult to cope in shared environments and who have complex and often unmet support needs. We already have 22 people living in Housing First accommodation, all maintaining their tenancies.
"However, moving to a housing-led model takes time and money and we’ll ensure that there is a flexible range of supported accommodation available to meet people’s needs as well.
"Making sure we can access government funding will be critical and we’ve worked closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Their funding programmes mean we’ve made good progress in reducing rough sleeping since it peaked at 61 people in 2017 – even though homelessness is now rising again across the country.
"The success of the ‘everyone in’ initiative during lockdown restrictions showed that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and we hope the government will sustain its own commitment to ending rough sleeping with continued funding.
"The introduction of the Homelessness Reduction Act in 2018 has led to a change in the type of household owed a housing duty. Single people and couples without children now make up more than half of placements into our temporary accommodation.
"To meet this change, we’re already providing more one-bed and two-bed affordable homes through our housing company OX Place, partnerships with housing associations and by buying homes on the open market.
"We’ll also carry out a full review of our allocations policy. People are sometimes excluded from social housing because of issues like past arrears or loss of a tenancy. We want to ensure this isn’t an unfair barrier for people without children if they could successfully maintain a tenancy now.
"Nearly a third of people in high needs supported accommodation are not eligible for social housing in Oxford because they have no local connection to the city. At the same time, there are limited options for people new to rough sleeping who would be able to sustain a tenancy with low to medium levels of support. The private rented sector represents the main move-on option for these groups and everybody knows how expensive private rents are in Oxford.
"Our partnership with Resonance means we’re already able to provide privately rented homes at local housing allowance rates. We’ll be looking to improve the support we can give to people moving on from supported accommodation and the streets into the private rented sector.
"These are difficult times. The cost of living crisis, interest rate rises and spiralling private rents mean that homelessness is on the rise again across the country. There’s no room for complacency. Our five-year plan is ambitious. Given the challenges we face, it needs to be."
Councillor Linda Smith, Cabinet Member for Housing
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