Councils ‘exporting’ homeless people to Croydon
By Tara O’Connor, Local Democracy Reporter
South London councils are “exporting” homeless people to Croydon where it is cheaper to house them, a councillor said.
Croydon’s cabinet member for finance, Councillor Jason Cummings, said the local authority was seen as a “soft touch” willing to provide cost-effective options.
Nearly 60 per cent of the homeless placements in Croydon come from other London boroughs, council documents show.
In the past three years, a total of 10,933 homeless placements were made in the borough, of which 6,450 were made by other local councils.
Wandsworth council placed 2,029 people in Croydon in the time frame, while 1,219 were from Lambeth and another 1,065 were from Sutton.
Croydon is preparing to update its homelessness and rough sleeping strategy. It anticipates an increase in people becoming homeless due to the cost of living crisis.
Cllr Cummings siad: “We end up picking up other support functions. If someone is placed here and they go back onto the streets we pick up all the support services.
“Councils in South London are exporting into Croydon. We’ve been seen as a soft touch by other councils, they think if we’ve got homelessness here we can just move them to Croydon, it is not helping anything.”
Croydon Mayor, Jason Perry, said the placements put extra strain on the council, health partners and police.
He said: “There is a pan-London agreement that we basically won’t do this. We are having conversations with London Councils about what’s happening here and the fact that this can’t go on.”
However, the data also shows that Croydon performs badly in intervening early.
Figures for 2020-21 put the borough in the bottom quartile for performance in preventing homelessness.
The council estimates it will cost £135,000 to produce a new homelessness strategy which it claims will save more than £1million in the long run, including a restructuring of the department.
The strategy is set to be discussed by Croydon Council’s cabinet at a meeting on Wednesday, December 7.
Pictured top: Croydon town centre (Picture: Tara O’Connor)