Homelessness campaigning group, Homes for Cathy has updated its commitments for housing associations with a renewed focus on equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), as well as working with people who have lived experience.
The move comes as official homelessness figures show nearly 45,000 households in England were assessed as homeless in the three months to December 2023, up 16% from just under 39,000 during the same period in 2022.
Homes for Cathy’s updated commitments now include a pledge “to understand and remove the barriers that disadvantage some applicants with a background of homelessness, including people from ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community and migrants, from accessing housing association properties”.
This reflects the disproportionality of minority groups in homelessness statistics, the organisation says.
David Bogle, Homes for Cathy chair, and chief executive of Hightown Housing Association, said: “Six years since we launched the original Homes for Cathy commitments, we felt the time was right for an update to better reflect how our members are using them, make clearer some of the core aims and set some new objectives to underpin what housing associations need to do to play their part in ending homelessness.
“We recognise that housing associations face competing challenges, from high inflation and higher borrowing costs, through to stronger consumer regulation, requiring difficult trade-offs. Yet, amid this backdrop, we believe housing associations still can – and should – make it a strategic priority to tackle homelessness. The updated Homes for Cathy commitments provide a simple set of homelessness KPIs that any housing association can adopt and by which their board can hold them to account.”
In a further revision to the original pledges, the group is urging housing associations to “work with stakeholders and people with lived experience of homelessness to provide a range of affordable housing and services which meet the needs of homeless people in their local communities”.
Additional updates call for more detailed monitoring of allocations to homeless households, support to maintain ‘at risk’ tenancies and support for previously homeless tenants to “access the essential items they need to make their property a home”.
The commitments – first launched in consultation with Crisis in 2018 – were created as a framework for housing associations to prioritise their efforts to end homelessness and benchmark progress.
Over 90 housing associations and around 30 affiliated homelessness charities have joined the Homes for Cathy alliance and voluntarily signed up to the commitments.
Main image: David Bogle, Homes for Cathy chair
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