‘It is a huge honour to join the International Mayors Council on Homelessness to share the work we are doing with an international audience’

In a first person piece, Sheffield City Council Leader Cllr Tom Hunt speaks about the Council signing up to be part of the International Mayors Council on Homelessness, and the benefits this will bring Sheffield.

Here in Sheffield, our aim is to end homelessness – and we are now part of a global group of cities working to make that happen.

The sight of people sleeping rough and stories of families living in temporary accommodation have, sadly, become familiar in recent years. But there is nothing inevitable about homelessness. It can be tackled, and in Sheffield we are developing innovative ways to prevent people from becoming homeless.

Around the world, cities and local authorities are at the forefront of finding solutions to end homelessness. Sheffield has now joined the International Mayors Council on Homelessness to join the global effort.

The international council is a partnership between the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the Institute of Global Homelessness. It is a huge honour that our city has been invited to join. Our membership of the council will allow us to share the work we are doing in Sheffield with an international audience and to learn from other global cities.

The global initiative includes Mayors and Leaders from Chicago, London, Paris, São Paulo and Helsinki, among other cities. Sheffield is one of only four British cities chosen to take part. Alongside the Mayor of London, I join Leaders and Mayors from Lambeth, Greater Manchester and Glasgow at the table.

We were invited to join because of our involvement in the Homewards initiative, the five-year programme founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales to demonstrate that together it is possible to end homelessness. I am proud that Sheffield is one of six locations in the UK to be part of this.

Over the last year, working with The Royal Foundation, the Homewards Sheffield Coalition has been formed. Alongside 63 other organisations and individuals, Sheffield City Council is part of the coalition with healthcare providers, mental health services, our city’s two universities, local businesses and grassroots community organisations. Crucially, the coalition has significant representation from those with lived experience of homelessness.

When Prince William attended a Homewards event in Burngreave in Sheffield last year, it was a powerful and moving experience to hear people who have experienced homelessness telling him about their lives. Their experiences are central to our work to tackle homelessness.

The collaborative approach is already working. The Sheffield coalition has been working with landlords who have pledged to make an initial 33 three and four-bedroom properties available for families on the brink of or experiencing homelessness in Sheffield to use. These are much-needed homes that will make a vital difference for families in our city.

Last month, Homewards celebrated its first anniversary – looking back at 12 months of hard work including a successful round table event right here in Sheffield attended by the Prince of Wales in March. Our work is only just getting started, but now we will share our work even further. Sheffield and Lambeth are the first Homewards locations to join the International Mayors Council to share the initiative’s learnings with a global audience.

Homewards Sheffield will focus efforts, with much-needed financial backing, on getting people the help they need before they lose their homes. To put it simply, a critical factor to ending homelessness is to stop people becoming homeless in the first place.

So Homewards Sheffield will focus on families experiencing ‘hidden’ homelessness, including those who are living in temporary accommodation such as hostels, hotels and shelters. It will also address the fact that in Sheffield there is a disproportionate number of people of Black and minoritised ethnic backgrounds who are becoming homeless, so our early work focuses on efforts on diverse communities in Sheffield and areas with high levels of deprivation. Our programme will aim to reach families before they are at risk of losing their home.

But we also know that we need more homes. That is why increasing the number of new homes in our city is a key priority for me and the Council. And it is why we are taking action to make this happen.

Over the next 15 years, we are committed to providing 36,000 new homes to meet the needs of a growing population. This includes 1,000 new council homes that we will bring forward over the next five years. We are also working hard with housing associations to drive up provision of affordable housing.

The new UK government is committed to building 1.5 million new homes across the UK in the next five years. We are ready to play our part so we have great neighbourhoods that people are happy to call home and that more of us have the safe, secure, quality places to live that we deserve. 

Sheffield is the fourth largest city in England and we are global, green and growing. Our goal is to end homelessness in our city - making it rare, brief and unrepeated.

We stand ready to work with cities around the world to learn, share best practice and work together to ensure everyone has a safe, secure home.

For more on this, you can read more on our SheffNews website.

For more information on the International Mayors Council, head to their website.

For more information on the Homewards initiative visit their website.