What is ‘rapid rehousing’ and how could it help homelessness in Wales?

When actor and activist Michael Sheen brought the Homeless World Cup to Cardiff in 2019, the event was billed as an opportunity to build a long-lasting legacy, tackling homelessness in the capital and beyond.

Five years and one pandemic later, homelessness in Wales has reached record levels with 6,447 households in temporary accommodation at the end of 2023-24, an 18% rise on the previous year.

The Welsh Government’s homelessness strategy, launched a few months after the Homeless World Cup, promises to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurrent.

To help achieve this the Welsh Government has said it will bring forward legislation this Senedd term. The Bill will aim to increase people’s entitlements to a home and help them access any healthcare or other services they may need.

A cornerstone of the strategy is a concept called ‘rapid rehousing’. The Welsh Government says that rapid rehousing should be the default approach for any household whose homelessness can’t be prevented.

This article explains what rapid rehousing is and considers what will be needed to make it happen.

Questioning the current system

You’d be forgiven for thinking that an intervention called ‘rapid rehousing’ would be all about shortening the length of time homeless people spend in temporary accommodation.

While that’s partly correct, rapid rehousing also means something more fundamental.

It questions the logic of the current homelessness system, in which people are typically ‘staircased’ through hostels and other forms of transitional accommodation, receiving support services along the way, until they are deemed ‘tenancy-ready’ and able to live independently.

Research by homelessness charity Crisis has concluded that the evidence base on the effectiveness of staircasing is ‘actually very weak’. The research found that many people with complex support needs are ‘unable to meet the demands of such programmes,’ leading to high drop-out rates and cyclical homelessness.

Instead, rapid rehousing is based on the principle that homeless people are better able to tackle any underlying issues in their lives, such as mental health or substance issues, if they are in a stable home.

The idea is that people should have a better chance of escaping homelessness for good if they go straight into a permanent tenancy as quickly as possible, receiving support from ‘floating’ support workers who are mobile rather than tied to accommodation.

Rapid rehousing is mainly meant for people who need a low or medium level of support. It is related to the better-known Housing First approach, which provides stable homes for people with high levels of support need. The two approaches are similar but aimed at groups with differing complexity of need.

Housing First projects in Wales are achieving tenancy sustainment rates of more than 90% while working with some of Wales’s most complex and marginalised people.

But while the effectiveness of Housing First is well-known globally, rapid rehousing is a newer concept and doesn’t yet have an established evidence base behind it.

What’s the plan in Wales?

The Welsh Government’s rapid rehousing transition guidance directs local authorities to treat most hostels and other supported accommodation as temporary accommodation, reducing their use over time.

While some specialist longer-term supported accommodation may remain, it should not be a default, as it often is today, but should only be for people who choose to be there.

Although local authorities are still in the early stages of implementing their rapid rehousing plans, over the longer term this shift could be significant for:

• charities in Wales that operate supported accommodation;
• local authorities in their capacity as commissioners of supported accommodation and floating support;
• social landlords, some of whom require people to prove they are tenancy-ready before they can be given a home; and
• people experiencing homelessness (‘to find a permanent place to call home is everything,’ as one participant said in a 2023 engagement exercise run by Cymorth Cymru).

What needs to change?

The five years since the Welsh Government spelled out its rapid rehousing ambitions have been difficult in many ways.

The ‘no-one left out’ approach, introduced by the Welsh Government in response to the pandemic, led to more than 35,000 people being provided with temporary accommodation between March 2020 and March 2023.

The Welsh Government pledged to keep this momentum going and ensure that people didn’t fall back into homelessness.

But local authorities have struggled to move people into permanent homes, meaning longer stays in hostels, hotels and B&B environments that can be highly traumatising.

Spending on temporary accommodation has reportedly more than doubled in three years according to a Freedom of Information request by Shelter Cymru, from £41 million in 2020-21 to more than £99 million in 2023-24.

As highlighted by the Bevan Foundation and Shelter Cymru in a recent report:

… reality is moving in the opposite direction to the Welsh Government commitments to minimise the use of bed and breakfast accommodation and improve standards of temporary accommodation.

There’s a similar picture in Scotland, where rapid rehousing has been part of the governmental agenda for even longer than in Wales.

The most obvious piece missing from the rapid rehousing jigsaw is a lot more housing.

The Local Government and Housing Committee recently concluded that despite headwinds such as the rising cost of materials and labour, there are opportunities to increase the supply of social homes.

One major challenge, though, is overcoming barriers to providing enough homes for single people.

Most homeless people are single. There were 4,266 single people in temporary accommodation at the end of March 2024, but in the 12 months leading up to that date only 263 one-bedroom dwellings were completed by social landlords.

Some witnesses told the Committee that building one-bed homes at scale is undesirable as developments need a greater social mix.

The Committee called on the Welsh Government to increase capital funding and develop a long-term housing strategy that includes a proactive effort to find ways to meet one-bed need.

Shared housing is another option. Although not always popular with landlords or tenants, there are some projects with track records of supporting stable shared arrangements in social housing and in the private rented sector.

Ultimately the payback of rapid rehousing could mean long-term savings to the public purse and an improved quality of life for people who’ve gone through the trauma of homelessness.

Getting rid of staircasing and judgements about tenancy-readiness will require strong leadership and better-funded support services. But until the Welsh Government can increase the supply of permanent homes, rapid rehousing will remain a future dream.

Article by Jennie Bibbings, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament