Open Letter to Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in Leicester

We are proud to have signed an open letter to all Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in Leicester and Leicestershire. Along with ten of our partners in the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Homelessness Alliance, we are asking all local candidates to recognise the growing homelessness crisis in our locality and to commit to addressing it as a priority.

The open letter reads,

Dear Prospective Parliamentary Candidate,

We are seeing a homelessness crisis in our region.

As leaders of Homelessness organisations in Leicester and Leicestershire, we urge you to prioritise
reducing homelessness and rough sleeping in our areas if you are elected as an MP. This worsening
crisis is devastating the lives of families, children and single people. People are suffering, often in
unsuitable, temporary accommodation which is negatively impacting the community and affecting
their future chances.

Below we outline the key issues we are facing locally and urge you to join us in implementing
effective solutions:

Issue 1: A lack of locally available affordable housing
• Limited or no social housing available in LLR
• Landlords refusing applications from housing benefit recipients
• Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates not reflecting private rented sector rents
• Unfair Social Landlord Rent settlements
We can tackle this issue by building more social housing in LLR, by increasing LHA rates to reflect
the cost of renting in the Private Rented Sector and by restricting or abolishing Right to Buy.

Issue 2: Broken systems, services and provision that exclude our service users
• Increased number of families and single people living in temporary accommodation
• Newly recognised refugees evicted from Home Office accommodation onto the streets
• Lack of support for people transitioning from prisons and hospitals into appropriate
accommodation
We can take steps to change this by banning No Fault Evictions (Section 21), getting Local
Authority’s to recognise the local connection of those granted leave to remain in their area and by
increasing the eviction notice period to 56 days for those leaving Asylum accommodation.

Issue 3: Short-term and disjointed funding to tackle homelessness
• Lack of cross-departmental planning and appropriate levels of funding that focus on long-term solutions to tackle Housing, Homelessness and Support deficit.
• Short-term funding leading to the risk of project and service closures.
• Lack of appreciation and understanding of the positive impact made by the voluntary
sector.
Improvements could be made by a better cross-departmental approach to tackling housing and
homelessness and a long-term strategy that enables and respects the contribution and impact the
voluntary sector makes to addressing complex social issues.

Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) Homelessness Alliance are a collective group of
organisations who work with those experiencing or at risk of homelessness working at a strategic
level in LLR. We believe these measures will create a significant positive impact on reducing
homelessness and rough sleeping in our area. Your support and commitment to these solutions
would be invaluable.