Help us make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring

To help us achieve our aim of making homelessness and rough sleeping rare, brief and non-recurring, we’re asking everyone interested to comment on our new draft strategy.

Our five-year Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy aims to build on the work of our highly-effective Housing Navigators and our partners. Through it, we plan to offer people who are homeless or facing homelessness, quick routes into suitable housing that can be sustained with high-quality support which is tailored to each individual’s needs.

For single homeless people, we plan to focus on rapidly re-housing them directly into their own home, and ideally avoid time in a hostel or temporary accommodation.

Where an individual or a family needs help to establish and maintain a tenancy, we will offer them support from our or our partner’s services. This will help prevent any future breakdown in tenancies and help people keep their homes.  

Key to the success of this strategy, is working with partners to build up the supply of suitable and affordable homes. Our Housing Delivery Programme is underway with creating 600 homes in the city, and the Ordnance Lane site has been reworked to be 100% affordable and deliver more much-needed one and two-bedroomed homes.  

Councillor Michael Pavlovic, Executive Member for Housing at City of York Council, said: “Homelessness and rough sleeping on our streets is a problem for not just an individual, but for us all and we need to do everything we can to end it. We have spent time trying to get the right approach, talking to those who work with and have been homeless, as well as specialist academics in this area.

“I’d ask anyone with an interest in housing, preventing homelessness and supporting anyone off the streets into a home to give ten minutes of their time to join this consultation. Your support will add to our strategy and help build hope and homes for all facing homelessness.”

All feedback and data from this consultation will be used to inform our Homelessness Strategy which will be presented to the Council’s Executive to consider in December 2024.

To take join in this consultation, please visit www.york.gov.uk/HomelessnessRoughSleepingStrategyConsultation and take part before 15 November 2024.