Bill Tidnam and I have worked in homelessness for a long time. It’s probably best not to dwell on exactly how many years. For a while, we worked in the same charity, managing hostels, supported housing, and resettlement support services side by side. Bill is now the Chief Executive of that charity (Thames Reach) and this week our paths will converge once again at an event we’re holding at Thames Reach’s Employment Academy in south London to mark the launch the Centre for Homelessness Impact’s new report on the role that hostels currently play in the homelessness system. 

Why are we focusing on hostels?

At the Centre for Homelessness Impact, we believe in taking a data-driven approach to understanding and ending homelessness. Hostels are a crucial part of the homelessness crisis response system. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the diverse landscape of hostel provision in 21st century Britain.  

That's why we launched this initiative – to map the characteristics of hostels across the UK and gain a deeper understanding of their role in the homelessness sector. This mapping exercise is just the first step. Our ambition is to use this intelligence to work out how best to deploy hostels, where they are most needed, and ensure they are getting the best results for people. By understanding the current state of hostels and their potential, we can work towards a future where they are a more effective and humane part of the homelessness crisis response system.

This groundbreaking report, based on the largest ever survey of UK hostels, is now available on our website - you can read it here. The report provides a comprehensive overview of current provision and provides a much-needed foundation for a new taxonomy and a roadmap for testing different models and service interventions in the future in partnership with our service delivery partners The Salvation Army, Single Homeless Project, Two Saints Limited, Framework, Centrepoint and St Mungo’s and to all other organisations that took part.

Hostels: A vital safety net, but not the end goal

For Bill, and for Thames Reach, hostels are a vital part of the safety net for people who find themselves homeless or rough sleeping. As Bill said to us as we prepared for the launch of the report: 

‘At Thames Reach we’d far prefer to be spending our time preventing street homelessness than responding to it. The reality is that we’re a long way away from that, and without access to hostels and a real and credible offer of accommodation there’s a danger that the work we do on the streets to find and help people rough sleeping is wasted. Hostels may be only the first step away from the streets for many people, but without this first step they would spend longer rough sleeping with the likelihood that any problems they have will become more entrenched.’  

But for anyone who has worked in hostels, it’s obvious they are not simply a much needed place to stay. Despite all the challenges faced, our report suggests that the majority of hostels still offer a range of essential services, including support with substance use, mental and physical health, alongside a fairly universal attempt to offer trauma informed support. And despite getting a bad reputation in recent years, the majority of the 317 hostels that we surveyed offered self-contained accommodation, with only 3.5% of all units in the sample requiring people to share rooms.

A few months ago, I was in a meeting with Bill and a group of hostel providers looking at what was needed to improve move-on outcomes from hostels in London. Those present talked openly about the fact that hostels now had to be all things to all people. Hostels that had originally been commissioned for people with low needs, were now being asked to accommodate people with a wide range of more complex needs, including those with brain injuries and learning disabilities. In that room, when Bill said that hostels had become the ‘mongrels’ of the sector, it landed heavily, but there was no hiding from the truth of it. 

While Housing First programmes have been funded and evaluated, hostels are not funded or developed well enough to be the ‘places of change’ they were in the early 2000s. Hostel budgets have been cut to the bone as a result of austerity, and everyone in that room agreed that all the additional support that made hostels much more successful in years gone by - with lifeskills, with resettlement, with social networks - had gone the same way as the ringfenced funding that once enabled the Supporting People programme. 

Those conclusions came from a chat between peers, but the Centre’s report tells the same story, just much more robustly. It also provides evidence of the move-on crisis, with hostels that were intended for shorter term use having to house people for much longer than anyone expected when they were commissioned. Hostels should be all about supporting people to develop the skills they need to live independently and to help people find settled housing. But if the permanent housing isn’t available, what role is there for hostels - especially those not built for long-term living. For Bill the way forward is clear:

‍‘In the 2000s the services provided by organisations like Thames Reach benefited from an approach to funding that recognised that the work that hostels do could not realistically be paid for by the rent that they collect. This is no longer the case, and hostels are increasingly dependent on the rent and service charge that they can raise.  Running a hostel is expensive – 24 hours staffing, frequent moves and relets – the financial model is closer to a hotel than general needs housing. 

But hostels need to be doing things that regular housing providers will never routinely aspire to: understanding why people are where they are and the help that they need; linking people with the right mental health, substance use and care services; and particularly helping people to move towards independence.  This last point is particularly significant. Staff in hostels are overwhelmed by the everyday pressures of running the scheme, yet there is still an expectation that they will find time to access alternative accommodation and get people ready to move on.’

One of the other things that Bill and his peers agreed on that was a little surprising, was that within every one of their hostels there was a significant minority of people that were staying longer than they were supposed to because they didn’t want independent housing out in the community. This cohort of people wanted the long-term security of their own place, needed the safety net of the support they got in a hostel, but really wanted to continue living communally. It sounds like an argument for what we might now call ‘congregate housing first’ but which was something that Thames Reach was developing back in the 1990s - self-contained flats, clustered together, with support provided onsite that is entirely optional. This model, as a potential model to take  forward for testing, taking the best of housing first principles but adapting it to the buildings we have and need to use, is something we’d like to explore in the next phase of our research work on hostels. 

• Bill Tidnam is the Chief Executive of Thames Reach.
• Michelle Binfield is the Centre’s Director of Programmes and Implementation.

Join us online on Friday 28th February and be part of the conversation and help shape the future of hostels.

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