Andy Burnham’s premiership will soon be a month old and the vibe is loud and clear: be the opposite of Keir Starmer. That means slick social media, charm and charisma, and ideas. Lots of ideas. Statements, activity, action! Here is my plan! Here is my vision! I’m here for it. My god, have we needed a group of politicians to come along and tell us a good story, and show us that they intend to use their power to make life better for people.
Given that I’ve spent a large chunk of my career working in homelessness services, both as an outreach worker and residential support worker, you would think I’d have jumped for joy at Burnham’s Day One pledge to “end rough sleeping”. But the truth is when I first heard it, my heart sank. It was like I was future me, already sad about his inevitable failure to make good on his promise.
I know that’s absurdly pessimistic, but this is an issue I care deeply about and the thing is… we’ve heard it all before. From Theresa May, from Boris Johnson and from Burnham himself. He said he would end rough sleeping in Manchester, and he didn’t! I’m not judging him for that. He did great things on homelessness, possibly more than any single politician has in the last two decades. The man donated 15 percent of his mayor’s salary to the cause, clearly he really cares about it. But caring isn’t enough.
It’s a mind bogglingly complex issue, and for anyone who’s interested I go into more detail in a piece I wrote earlier this year. But the fundamental point is this… fixing rough sleeping is not just about putting people in buildings and calling them “homes”.
Why did Burnham’s A Bed Every Night (ABEN) scheme in Manchester ultimately fail to end rough sleeping? Why did the Everyone In campaign in the wake of the pandemic unravel and see the thousands of people that it accommodated end up back on the streets? Because once you’ve found someone a bed for the night, or the week or even the month, then what do you do?
The majority of rough sleepers have chronic mental health and addiction issues. In lots of cases they are traumatised by experiences of abuse and personal tragedy. Andy Burnham clearly understands this, which is why he says sensible things about properly funding mental health and addiction services. He understands that cuts to the prison and probation service have contributed to the sharp rise in rough sleeping over the past decade or more. He understands that local authorities being brought to the brink of financial ruin has made everything much worse, and that the state of housing, both costs and pressures, is utterly obscene.
But what is the common thread? What links the stories of the people who end up on the street? Isolation. Being disconnected from themselves and the people around them.
If I lost my job, or my relationship broke down, or I was evicted from my home, and I started drinking and using drugs to cope, I would not end up living on the street. That’s because my family and friends wouldn’t let that happen. And that goes for the majority of the population. People end up living on the street because their social support network has broken down. This could have been due to their upbringing, born into a socially dysfunctional and chaotic environment, or be a consequence of their own decisions and actions. Either way, an inadequate or non-existent social support network is by far the greatest risk factor.
Rough sleeping and homelessness exploded under Thatcher, an era defined by the ideological belief in the sanctity of the individual. “Collectivism”, “solidarity”, “state intervention”, these were ideas associated with socialism, which was the antithesis of freedom and liberty. But what those ideas also underpinned was the concept of community.
The smaller people’s worlds are, and the more individualised their perception of citizenship is, the greater the pressure on themselves and their immediate circle to not fail. To not fall down. Because if you fall you will hit the ground hard, and with only yourself and your immediate circle taking the strain, it will be that much harder to get back up.
As an outreach worker I met many rough sleepers who had places to sleep for the night, whether they be shelters, temporary accommodation or even their own flats. Many people can’t get their heads around this. Why on earth would someone choose to sleep on the streets if they had a house? Because a house is only made a home by the people who live in it. By people who feel connected, loved and cared for. Who feel safe and comfortable within its walls.
These people didn’t feel that connection to a place that other people had moved them into and called their “home”. All they were to them were buildings, which contained nothing but deafening and suffocating silence. Where were the people? Where was the activity, and a world to engage with? The streets. That was their community.
I’m not saying this applies to everyone rough sleeping, but it applies to far more than most people realise. Far more problems than you can resolve by simply finding houses and sticking people in them. The problem is not the absence of a house, it is the absence of purpose. It is the absence of a settled home that exists in their minds.
When Andy Burnham talks about “rolling back 40 years of neo-liberalism”, nebulous as this statement is, I do genuinely believe that what he’s talking about is rebuilding communities, and reversing the damage caused by the hyper-individualism that has engulfed our society. And he is talking my language. What a feeling it is to have a Prime Minister with whom I share not only core values but also the ideas behind actually making society better! What a moment. What an opportunity.
Which is exactly why the overriding feeling I had when Burnham made his Day One pledge to end rough sleeping was anxiety. The scale of the problems we face as a country is quite overwhelming, and the conditions within which a Prime Minister has to work in order to solve them have never been more challenging. An incredibly toxic, never ending media cycle and the increasing influence of AI, an electorate who want immediate solutions to very complex problems, and a climate of chronic disdain and mistrust of politicians. Not to mention dizzying global challenges and our over-exposure to their effects. It is within this environment that Burnham is trying to rebuild society. And it will be a matter of weeks or months at most before his opponents in parliament and the media claim that he has reneged on his rough sleeper pledge, despite the fact that they all know a short term solution to this problem is impossible.
At the same time, he has a Chancellor who dramatically resigned as Defence Secretary only 6 weeks ago over Britain’s woeful military and defence capabilities, an ever-threatening Russia and a straight-up hostile US, who’ve made it clear they have no intention of defending Europe anymore. There is pressure on all sides for him to deal with this problem, and it will be painfully complex and eye-wateringly expensive. Then there’s social care, the NHS, and his pledge to oversee the “biggest house building programme since the post-war period”. Addressing all of this will take time and money, two privileges he’s unlikely to be afforded ahead of the next election.
If Burnham does succeed at reimagining the way our society is structured and implementing his vision, then ending rough sleeping may well be a happy consequence of that. But it will take decades. As I’ve already emphasised, you don’t end rough sleeping by throwing money at it. You have to gear the machinery of government towards tackling its causes as well as its symptoms, and for that you need to not only rebuild communities, but re-establish people’s sense of collective identity. You need to lead the way in encouraging people to consider themselves part of something bigger and more important. You need to lead them out of the age of the worship of the self, and you can’t do that with good faith and a sound public policy programme alone.
I have read many arguments about how the pledge shouldn’t be taken too literally, and that what matters is the symbolism of it. It is a signal of his values and the direction he wants to go in. I don’t buy that. This is an issue that he clearly deeply cares about. It would be perverse to say the least if he had made that pledge on the first day of his premiership and didn’t intend to, or believe he could, deliver it.
If he had stood on the steps of Downing Street on day one and pledged to build a National Social Care Service, or get defence spending to 5% of GDP, I’d have been nervous sure, and bracing myself, but I’d have believed it. I’d have thought oooofff, that’s gonna be tough but maybe he can do it. But he can’t do this. He can’t end rough sleeping while he’s Prime Minister. And I fear that this pledge will be one he comes to regret. A stick his enemies will beat him with with relish. Proof of his all things to all men style of politics, and ultimately his failure to deliver on his promises. This is what I fear, and I desperately hope that I’m wrong.
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Teddy Maxwell has been a member of Compass since 2023. He has also spent a decade working in various roles in frontline social support settings – including rough sleeper outreach, human trafficking, sexual violence, addiction and supported accommodation services. You can find his writing on these issues and more on his Substack, The Social Edge – https://substack.com/@thesocialedge?utm_source=about-page