New partnership aims to end homelessness in Newcastle in 10 years

Jon Sparkes, Crisis Chief Executive, said: “We’re incredibly proud to be partnering with Newcastle City Council to end homelessness in the city within ten years. The city’s strong leadership in tackling and preventing homelessness and in its ambition to be a city free from homelessness presents a real opportunity to commit to such a momentous endeavour.

“The homelessness crisis is one of the most urgent issues of our time. People shouldn’t be needlessly suffering life on the streets, waking up for work on sofas or be living for long periods in hostels and B&Bs. But we know we can fix this.

“It will take hard work and commitment to achieve but we know the solutions are there. By working together with the council and other partners over the coming years, we can learn more about what works to sustainably end homelessness. So that if on the rare occasion people do lose their homes, we can ensure we have the right safety nets in place to catch them. Because in 21st century Britain no one should ever find themselves without the dignity and stability of a safe home.”

Newcastle City Council has fought hard to combat homelessness in the city. It launched its Active Inclusion Newcastle partnership approach to support residents to have the foundations for a stable life. This partnership approach works to prevent homelessness and financial exclusion in the city at a time when the council’s budget will have been cut by £327m.

And in recognition of the effectiveness of homelessness prevention initiatives, the government asked Newcastle to become one of three ‘early adopter’ Homelessness Prevention Trailblazers, and last year, the council joined partners around the city in launching the Street Zero initiative which aims to end rough sleeping in Newcastle by 2022.

By working with Crisis, the council will also be better placed to evidence what Newcastle can do to build on our work to protect residents so that everyone has a home and what Government needs to do. 

In addition to the new partnership, Newcastle City Council is sharing the learning from its Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer. A learning event today (June 20) heard from Heriot-Watt University’s research ‘Homelessness prevention in Newcastle: Examining the role of the ‘local state’ in the context of austerity and welfare reforms’.

The research states: “The headline story in Newcastle then is of a city facing an extremely challenging context, but managing to maintain extremely low and stable levels of homelessness on almost all measures”.