Reform & Revolution 7 - 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act

Published by Hannah Wooderson for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Featured

Over the coming months 24housing is unravelling – through personal testimony – the top 10 events, chosen by our panel of experts, to have shaped housing in the last 60 years.

Number 7: 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act

The man instrumental in pushing through rights for the homeless admits he nearly walked away from the Bill, now seen by many as being the most important of all housing legislation. Here, former Shelter campaigner Bob Widdowson (pictured) tells Ross Macmillan about its tumultuous journey to the statute book as campaigning charities battled for its place in history.

What could you do for homeless families prior to the 1977 Act?

As a housing adviser in the early 1970s if we had a homeless family in we had to work on persuasion with the local authority because we had no legal backing to force their re-housing. Sometimes we did sit-ins at local authority departments where we’d take families along and refuse to leave until they provided accommodation for all of them.

There was always the threat that the children might be taken into care because at that time a limited duty rested on social services and not housing departments to provide temporary accommodation.

We had some interesting relationships – sometimes we did sit-ins at local authority departments, etc. We’d take families along and refuse to leave until they provided accommodation for all of them.

Was there any legislation to work within?

We had the 1948 National Assistance Act, but it didn’t establish clear rights. It basically placed a general duty on local authorities to provide assistance to homeless people but not specifically. Because it replaced the Poor Law, the culture within local authorities was still Poor Law embedded. So what the Act did was to ensure there was temporary accommodation available but no permanent right to housing.

We had some quite ghastly former Poor Law establishments. You were given accommodation for a limited time. In many local authority areas the men were separated from the women so the accommodation was provided just for the mother and children but not necessarily the father. If it was provided for the father it would be in separate accommodation.

How many phone calls would you be getting a week?

We’d be getting 50 or 60 calls from homeless people a week. Our desks used to be covered in casework.

We were in London and we were very close to the levers of power. London was a village in those days. We had access to all the levers of power. I remember running along Fleet Street and dropping press releases off at all the newspaper offices at 5am in the morning. You could do that kind of thing. It was a lot more concentrated. The triangle was Fleet Street, Parliament and the BBC. It was useful.

How did your work at Shac progress?

After a couple of years working in the intake team at Shac we set up an emergency department and one of the first people I employed was Nick Raynsford, whom I’d known through the Labour Party at Fulham. He was a councillor. After Nick joined Geoff Randall and Jeff Zitron joined. We became this sort of hit team. We were just wild young boys who got on to local authorities and told them something needed to be done.

Were people consciously aware of homelessness?

During the 1960s and 1970s there were a couple of seminal academic works on homelessness, highlighting the issue. In February 1974, the last month of the Ted Heath administration, the Government produced a circular 18/74, which was a remarkable document for a Conservative Government. They clearly set out guidance to local authorities which said they should take homeless households and other ‘vulnerable’ people, and that they should provide them with permanent accommodation. So it was a huge cultural change. We argued that while it was obviously a very important step forward, without legislative backing it would not have an affect. But it was very far-reaching and it did have an impact. It was the turning point because it focused minds on homelessness. Interestingly, it had no concept of ‘intentional’ homelessness – it said clearly, if homelessness is self-inflicted they should nevertheless be housed.

Why did you leave Shac?

I was burned out after nearly five years of giving housing advice – particularly that type of housing advice – and I wanted to just get into straight campaigning. So I joined Shelter in 1974.

When did the Government decide homeless legislation was needed?

In 1975, following extensive campaigning by the Joint Charities Group – a coalition of campaigning charities set up in 1973 – the DoE set up a homelessness review and following consultation, concluded that new legislation was needed.

Did the charities get to have their say?

In the spring of 1976, the DoE initiated a series of consultation meetings at the DoE about the form and scope of the legislation. Originally intended to be round table discussions the local authority associations refused to sit at the same table as the charities so we had separate discussions. Local government went in in the morning and we went in in the afternoon, with the government then holding the ring on this.

What provisions were the charities fighting for?

We were seeking to achieve legislation that included a broad definition of homelessness including those in poor housing conditions and for it to cover all homeless people including single people.

The local authorities – particularly the Association of District Councils – resisted a firm duty in favour of one that allowed more local discretion in whom they would house.

These meetings went on over the summer, but the problem was, we were viewing everything second hand instead of being able to negotiate directly with the local authority associations in front of the DoE.

A fundamental sticking point was that we wanted some enforcement mechanism. The local authorities didn’t want that at all. The DoE was therefore attempting to hold the balance between the two camps without any firm views of its own on how the legislation should be framed. Inevitably, this meant that we had to settle for less than we hoped and the chief casualty were the single homeless who with some limited exceptions were not covered by the legislation.

If the government was already going to legislate, how did the 1977 Act get through via a Private Member’s Bill?
By autumn 1976 the government had a draft Bill but we heard a few weeks before the Queen’s Speech setting out their programme for the 1976/1977 Parliamentary session that the Bill had been dropped because of a shortage of time in the programme.

That’s when we felt a Private Member’s Bill might be an appropriate channel. Within half an hour of the ballot for Private Member’s Bills being announced we’d contacted Liberal MP Stephen Ross, who had drawn fourth place in the ballot. He agreed to promote a Bill drafted by the charities. However, DoE officials suggested that Ross introduce its Bill instead. The charities agreed that this was better than their own but argued for its extension to Scotland, which was eventually agreed. The Government then agreed to hand their Bill over to him.

Why was the Government happy to hand its Bill over to a Liberal MP?

It was happy to hand it over as pressure was coming from both sides – pressure from within the Labour Party as a result of lobbying by the Joint Charities Group. And pressure from the Liberals – this was the time of the Lib/Lab Pact and uncertainty about the survival of the government for another parliamentary year because of its slim majority. So the Private Members route offered an option to get the legislation through by the 'back door'.

Was there opposition?

While the Bill had support from MPs of all parties it was strongly opposed by others. Tory Hugh Rossi, who was a former housing minister, led the charge on the Bill, supported by some Labour MPs. He did two things:

He introduced the intentionality clause (i.e. the Bill wouldn’t cover self-inflicted homelessness) – we didn’t want this, because the Heath Government’s circular 18/74 had said irrespective of their reasons for homelessness they should be housed. The second thing he introduced was local connection harking back to the Poor Law parish responsibilities. Various amendments were introduced in the Bill as it trundled its way through which is where this new animal – the Code of Guidance came up.

So provisions were sacrificed to ensure it got through?

Basically the government – a civil servant called Jim Hannigan – could see the only way this Bill was going to get through was if it offered some concessions to the opposition. So he basically said, “Don’t worry guys we can cover a lot of this in the Code of Guidance”. This was a completely new animal. The Code of Guidance, which came out afterwards, while the Bill was going through Parliament, tried to shore up some of the gaps through guidance.

Did the final draft represent the provisions you were fighting for?

There were arguments within the joint charities group and I was one of the ones that actually said we should walk away from it, as it wasn’t what we wanted. We were all idealistic young people. I feel totally different now. It was a success no doubt about that.

What was its biggest triumph?

The biggest triumph was the huge culture shift – it was homelessness being seen as a housing issue, not something about personal failings that needed a social worker. Prior to the 1977 Act, the social services department within local authorities dealt with homelessness. The Act ensured homelessness was seen as a housing issue – despite some MPs referring to ‘scrimshankers and scroungers – fulfilling the recommendations of countless studies over the preceding decades that homelessness was about housing and not personal failings.

There was a punitive approach to homelessness that was rooted in the Poor Law. It was about fecklessness and irresponsibility. That’s completely different now. I would think in the vast majority of local authorities, if not all, there is a commitment to deal with homeless people and that wasn’t there 30 years ago.

Bob Widdowson was a housing advice director at Shelter and London Housing Aid Centre (Shac) and campaigner at Shelter.

1977 – What else was happening?

• The Liberal Party form a "Lib/Lab pact" with Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, after Labour loses its overall majority in Parliament.
• King of rock Elvis Presley and comic Charlie Chaplin die.
• The Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
• Star Wars hits cinemas.
• Red Rum gallops into history winning the Grand National for a record third time.