‘Local services are vital’: Former rough sleepers on what helped them off the streets

As Andy Burnham hosts a rough sleeper summit, frustration mounts over ‘ridiculous bureaucracy’ and lack of hostel places

Martin Fletcher had been homeless for more than 20 years after being made redundant before he finally got accommodation in Sunderland in 2024.

What was the one thing that finally ended his rough sleeping and sofa surfing? “My mindset, mainly,” the 61-year-old said. “The realisation that I was getting old and I couldn’t live like this for ever. And also help from a charity who didn’t judge, who didn’t bombard me with forms – they made me a cup of tea and built up a picture of what I needed and helped me get back on track.”

That charity was Basis Sunderland’s drop-in service for housing support, which closed its doors in July for lack of funding.

Fletcher found this devastating: “How are they going to end rough sleeping when services like this are closing? You’ve got to remember, unless people want to come in off the streets, it won’t happen. They said they did it during Covid but they didn’t – I was still on the streets. And not all homelessness is visible. So these local services are vital.”

Andy Burnham, who had announced plans in July to end rough sleeping and offer everyone in need a bed by Christmas, hosted a summit on the issue on Monday.

The prime minister told the Downing Street event this commitment would be backed by a further £432m to sustain the support into next year. A number of charities had raised concerns that people would simply end up back on the streets after Christmas. Burnham said he was “bringing together businesses, charities and local leaders in Downing Street to make sure this is a solution that lasts”.

Those who work in the homelessness sector have warned there is no easy solution. The Guardian has spoken to several formerly homeless people to find out what helped them back into housing, sometimes after decades of sleeping on the streets.

Amy Bell, 37, was street homeless and struggling with heroin addiction for seven years between 2013 and 2020. She said she hit “rock bottom” when her council said it could offer her only a voucher for a two-man tent, which she “cried herself to sleep in at night”.

The next morning, workers employed by the same council put her tent and all her belongings in the bin because it was classed as litter. Borrowing a phone from a Citizens Advice centre, she secured a place at a hostel for a few weeks, which enabled her to reconnect with a local drug treatment service, get a phone with a sim card and start to rebuild.

She said being offered a bed in a hostel, even though she was still taking drugs, was the key to getting her off the streets. “The hostel system is broken. You are basically set up to fail,” she added.

“They don’t accommodate people with addiction problems, and that’s who it should be for. Eventually you will do something that shows you are still using and they ban you. It doesn’t take long to get kicked out of all of them. And then you’re left with nothing.”

Bell said for Burnham to succeed in abolishing rough sleeping he must get rid of the “ridiculous bureaucracy” that stops people from accessing support.

“Everything is done by app now. When you’re homeless, you don’t have that – believe me, if you get a decent phone, you sell it,” she said. “The days of being able to walk into the Citizens Advice bureau or the jobcentre don’t exist any more. Homeless people need a real-life person to help them.”

Others the Guardian spoke to said they moved from England to Scotland because it was easier to get help there after it abolished the priority needs test in 2012. According to Crisis, Scotland has some of the most progressive homelessness rights in the world.

Tony* became homeless after being released from prison in 2024. He told his probation officer he had nowhere to go but was simply advised to contact a council homelessness team the day of his release.

No housing was available and he ended up sleeping in a tent in the woods. “I was a prison leaver, I hadn’t made myself intentionally homeless, but there was nothing. The support was nonexistent,” he said. “I was telling my probation officer where I’m sleeping at our weekly meetings but they didn’t help.”

A chance meeting led him to the Salvation Army, where he has been living in supported accommodation for the past two years. With evidence suggesting the amount of people being released from prison into homelessness is on the rise, Tony said the government must deal with this issue if it wanted to end rough sleeping.

“I was in for three years, and they only started talking to me about accommodation 10 days before I was released,” he said. “If I’d been set up with a bedsit or something like that, the government would have paid less in the long run. I would have begrudgingly gone to a hostel but that wasn’t even offered. Something has to change.”

* Some names have been changed to protect anonymity