Matt Downie has been at Crisis for over a decade and its CEO since 2022. In that time the homelessness crisis has got worse, despite successive governments throwing millions of pounds at it.

With unwanted records being broken with every statistical release, Crisis has had enough of sticking-plaster, short-term solutions and the failure of housing associations to play their part in addressing homelessness. It feels direct action is needed so it’s becoming a landlord in its own right.

In this wide-ranging interview, Downie discusses the charity’s long-term plan to become a registered provider, his disappointment at the government’s new strategy to end homelessness, and why allocations schemes and affordability checks mean social housing is no longer available to the poorest in society. HQM editor Jon Land asks the questions.

Jon Land: You’ve been providing hotel accommodation for homeless people in London as part of the latest Crisis at Christmas campaign. How’s that been going? How do you decide who gets to stay in the hotels?

Matt Downie: Yes. So, the Crisis at Christmas operation these days is quite unrecognisable to when I first started. It’s a mixture of things, not just in London but around the country, but the hotel bit is London-centric. What we do is take over as many hotels as we can get hold of, which is a difficult business. But what happens is that we’re effectively booking space for people who are on a referral list from the local councils and the GLA. We’re looking for specific cohorts of rough sleepers particularly those with high needs, but not so high that we can’t safely accommodate them. We’re not talking about people who are new to the streets. It’s people who are longer-term homeless but not necessarily engaging with other services.

“I remember meeting a guy in Liverpool who had been in the same hostel for 10 years. And I said to him, what was the issue when he first got here? And he said rent arrears. He just needed some help paying off his rent. Ten years later, the state had spent a fortune institutionalising him”

We provide a volunteer-led, hugely welcoming service which is all about generosity and the fact that people (when they’re with us, we refer to them as guests) have a pampered experience as well as the housing casework that goes along with it. It’s all to do with having good relationships with the local councils, particularly Westminster and others who have high rough sleeping populations.

This year we had our first women’s service for female rough sleepers and that itself is a kind of a new venture where we’re working with female rough sleepers who will quite often be some of the most terrified, abused and disgraceful cases of institutional and social neglect you’ll ever see. So, we’re proud to have done that too.

For the people who are the most difficult cases, where we haven’t found housing options for them, we’re taking longer to do it by extending the service to the end of January. We have a case management team for that, and we also work in partnership with Saint Mungo’s. It’s about throwing everything at the situation to make sure that people don’t go back to the streets. Last year, 60% of those people didn’t, which for a fairly short-term intervention is pretty remarkable.

JL: Crisis is very much on the frontline when it comes to tackling homelessness. Just how bad is it out there currently?

MD: Homelessness is very bad everywhere and pretty much every record is broken every time there’s a new statistical return. We’re in a situation where all of the different causes are converging at once, so you’ve got a situation where it’s not just an increase in rough sleeping, it’s an increase in temporary accommodation, in different forms of hidden homelessness, in different demographics. So, at any one time you could put out a report about the rise of homelessness in young people or older people or people who are disabled or people who are neurodivergent or whatever it might be. Care leavers, prison leavers. It’s a sort of everything moment, really. All our services are seeing an increase in demand year-on-year.

We’re also seeing the withdrawal of the safety net. I remember years ago doing mystery shopping of housing option services that now don’t even exist. The whole situation has changed. I could give you some horror stories from recent years. It’s really quite grim.

JL: We know that the homelessness sector has been frustrated by the lack of action and funding from successive governments. Do you see this changing under the new National Plan to End Homelessness? What more do you think the government should be doing?

MD: In terms of ongoing frustrations with government, it’s not really to do with spending on homelessness. It’s to do with the right spending to prevent it or to stop it. Actually, I think successive governments have spent a huge amount on servicing the problem. I think it’s over £3 billion now that’s been spent on temporary accommodation. You’ve probably heard all these statistics before, but £5 million a day is spent on temporary accommodation in London alone.

This is to do with both a complete inability or lack of willingness to tackle the genuine causes of homelessness and throwing money at short-term management solutions rather than sustainable solutions. I think the strategy that’s been published is a valiant effort to continue that sort of frame of thought and does include some good things. But it really isn’t getting at the long-term solution or changing the dialogue of how we approach this issue, beyond just sticking plasters.

“I did say to the senior civil servants, when they got in touch to say that the homelessness strategy was out, how gutted I was by it. We saw it as a failure of not persuading them that a different approach was needed”

The document is fascinating because it’s far more honest about where homelessness comes from than any government document I’ve ever seen. It’s really clear that there are structural and welfare and immigration and housing supply policy-based causes. But the actual measures in the strategy to tackle the problem don’t include those things.

If this was a prime minister-led thing, like the New Labour targets on homelessness in the late ‘90s, you would see other departments being told to lift their weight on local housing allowance, the move-on period for newly granted refugees, the throughput of care leavers or prison leavers. There are some green shoots in some of those things, but it’s not enough. We’ve been waiting for years for this. I’m more gutted than I’d normally be because I think a lot of the aspirations were raised and, particularly when Angela Rayner was around, we were expecting something a bit bigger than what we got.

I don’t know what happened within the machinery of government, but if you think back to the weeks leading up to the general election and the manifesto pledges around homelessness, about a cross government approach and having a deputy prime minister that was leading on ending homelessness and not just the housing secretary, all of those things pointed to finally having enough political capital within government for the sustainable solutions to be on the table.

Fast forward and what we’ve got is a version of the political capital that homelessness has always had, which is “the numbers are high and we’ve got to do something”. In every government press release, they will say “we’re spending £2 million or X billion on this” and can rightly claim that there are good things happening. But what they can’t credibly claim is that every lever has been pulled to stop the causes of homelessness.

JL: There’s no doubt that the temporary accommodation crisis has snowballed in recent years, putting pressure on homeless services and local authority finances, while at the same time forcing some families to live in really poor conditions. Do you have thoughts on what can be done to address the situation beyond what’s currently being mooted by government?

MD: The macro picture of this is that, as a country, we’ve become addicted to spending all of the available money on temporary solutions. When you look at the sheer scale of [the temporary accommodation crisis] and the fact that it threatens local authority finances, what you realise is that we need to switch to a housing-led solution where there’s sufficient stock for everyone to live in a proper home and a future where there’s enough new delivery coming through.

What I’d love to see is a focus on how truly affordable and social housing is the way to get off the hamster wheel of temporary accommodation, both for the costs that it accrues and the sorts of conditions people are being forced to live in. We need to stop grinding down our expectations for what standards we deem acceptable for people to live in.

Until there’s enough social stock to go round, the critical thing is to allow affordability back into the private rented sector. But [the government] is not doing that. And they’ve expressly said they won’t. I think that’s just a critical mistake. Of course, the Treasury will always say it’s just money down the drain, giving money to landlords, portfolio landlords and all the rest of it, but until you do that, what you’re actually doing is increasing the number of people who are going to need some form of subsidised housing, so council waiting lists are going to get longer.

JL: That brings me on to the recent research Crisis commissioned that shone a light on social housing allocations. It demonstrated that those in most housing need, such as homeless people, aren’t necessarily at the top of the priority list. Are you able to share your thoughts on some of those findings?

MD: The first thing to say is that we’re in a situation in England where, particularly compared to Scotland, the ability to use the social rented sector via housing associations for resolving homelessness is far smaller and the powers to make that happen are far weaker. That sort of deregulation has meant it’s really hard for an organisation like ours, which is trying to get access to social housing. It all has to be done based on local relationships. And that’s not just for charities. It’s often the same for local authorities.

“There’s a reason why Crisis is having to think about starting to deliver its own stock. And it’s simply because the housing stock that’s meant to be for people who have nowhere to live is no longer available”

The research shows that we’re in a situation where, according to a number of housing providers, you can be too poor for social housing. I’m not sure anyone expected to see that coming. I suppose it’s just symptomatic if you build everything around affordability checks.

There’s a reason why we’ve fought for and got what’s called the Homelessness and Social Housing Allocations Bill in Wales. There’s a reason why we’ve fought for and got something in the homelessness strategy, about increasing social housing and allocations to homeless households. There’s a reason why Crisis is having to think about starting to deliver its own stock.

And it’s simply because the housing stock that’s meant to be for people who have nowhere to live is no longer available.

JL: Can we be specific about this? We’re talking about housing associations essentially opting out of local waiting lists and not having a statutory duty to do anything about homelessness. So, they can pick and choose who they house.

MD: Yes, totally that. It’s really hard to label a whole sector. And I must say, we work with lots of very good housing associations, particularly through the Homes for Cathy group that’s specifically dedicated to tackling homelessness.

But it’s now so commonplace to say either they can simply opt out or that if these are households with support needs, where’s the money coming from to pay for that support? So, they are opting out of ever providing housing to those people.

We then enter a sort of death spiral where the percentage of homeless households goes up with nowhere to go. I remember talking to the [social housing] regulator a couple of years ago about whether they could do some monitoring of the percentage of allocations to homeless households by registered providers and the percentage of households who are evicted into homelessness so we can start bringing into the light what the reality of this is. They absolutely refused that and didn’t want to go anywhere near it. That’s why we ended up doing the research because we were seeing it on the frontline every day.

JL: I suppose the mitigation is that with the affordable rent regime becoming the only game in town for any sort of grant funding, social rented housing has been off the table for a long time. Would you accept that?

MD: Absolutely. And I think it’s completely naive to just say we need the housing association sector to suddenly rediscover its 1960s roots. The changes made by the coalition government to what affordability is, and the changes to section 106s, that’s definitely all in there. But I totally refute the idea organisations, particularly big organisations, can do nothing to help. I won’t name them, but I could tell you about some large organisations who won’t even give us two or three units to tackle homelessness.

Some of these organisations will have foundations they have set up to deal with social issues and I’m thinking to myself – hang on a second, just put a little bit into the subsidy you need to make this tenancy work or for it not to break down. I think it’s sometimes about large organisations rediscovering the reasons why they were set up in the first place and what their purpose really is.

I think there’s a genuine opportunity for a partnership going forward where we can join forces to get people’s situations improved. Everyone is facing pressure. Whether you’re a private landlord, social landlord or a council trying to build or retain its own stock, all of that stuff is hard. But we can make a collective case for a better grant regime or for sorting out local housing allowance or whatever it might be.

JL: You’ve already alluded to it, but is this one of the driving factors for Crisis going down the housing landlord route? Can you tell us about that and where things are currently?

MD: There are two reasons for doing this. First and foremost, we’re helping 10,000 people in our year-round services and at the moment we get about 40% of those people sustainably out of homelessness a year. That’s not enough. The number one thing standing in the way is access to homes. The second reason is that the revolution that’s happened elsewhere in the way in which homelessness is dealt with, and that it requires a housing-led solution – rather than just something that should be managed – hasn’t reached these shores.

If you go to a vast array of countries, across Europe and the wider western world, you see now that the modern approach to homelessness is nothing to do with providing temporary accommodation and tinkering with short-term solutions. It’s saying we’re going to systematically close down our old institutions – our big hostels, our big shelters – because they don’t work anywhere near as well as giving people a home of their own and the support if they need it. We need a housing first principle that runs through the whole system.

“I [talked] to the [social housing] regulator a couple of years ago about whether they could do some monitoring of the percentage of allocations to homeless households by registered providers and the percentage of households who are evicted into homelessness. They absolutely refused that and didn’t want to go anywhere near it”

Things are just getting more and more urgent. So, from a standing start, the plan is to directly raise the money as a charity for the acquisition of our first hundred homes, and then to look at the different finance options once we’ve developed a credible track record in tenancy support and housing management. We’ve got to this conclusion because we’ve run out of other options. We also think we can prove a point by doing it.

The ultimate ambition is that we can provide a housing option for all the 10,000 people that we see. We also want to provide the evidence base to show that you can completely cut out the need for temporary and emergency accommodation.

JL: Do you have any homes currently? If so, where are they and what’s the plan?

MD: So, the first phase is us becoming a landlord and we’ll do that in London and Newcastle to start with. That’ll just see us buying one or two-bedroom flats on the open market. But we have it in mind to act from day one as if we’re preparing to become a registered provider.

We expect to exceed all of the quality standards and all the rest of it, but we’ll have to have in mind where we want to go in the future. That second phase of [ramping up] the amount of stock will have to involve financing of a nature that we can’t access now because we’re not a registered provider. I’m currently recruiting the person that’s going to lead this housing company. So, the company’s set up, we’ll start the purchasing in April and May.

In London, we’re also setting up our own lettings agency, which will do a lot of the housing management side of this as well.

JL: And presumably there will be a support element to the housing you provide?

MD: Yes, exactly that. The absolute gift to the local authorities that’ll work alongside us, as well as all the other support services, is that crisis – through its own charitable funds, which we raise from the generous British public – will provide the tenancy support offer to people

What we’re not doing here is seeking to replicate housing for people who would get it otherwise. We’re going to be providing housing to people who get nothing, who are routinely told they’re not a priority or who would never get access to social housing.

What I really want to do above all else is demonstrate that, even in the hardest cases of homelessness, we shouldn’t be consigning people to a life of temporary accommodation or emergency housing.

JL: Am I right in saying that you’re aiming for 1,000 homes within the next decade?

MD: Yes, that’s what’s written down. But I have to say, Jon, I would be gutted if it’s just 1,000.

JL: I want to finish by asking you about Matt Downie the person. What motivates you to do the job you do? And what do you do to unwind?

MD: In terms of motivation, I often think that if you’ve become cynical and fatalistic about homelessness, you need to get out of the way and let somebody else take over who’s got the fire in their belly for long-term solutions.

I’m constantly motivated by wonderful organisations in this country and other places, but I did say to the senior civil servants, when they got in touch to say that the homelessness strategy was out, how gutted I was by it. We saw it as a failure of not persuading them that a different approach was needed. That’s how I felt about it personally.

I don’t think they’d ever heard a sentence like that. I’ll try and organise a meeting to have a genuine conversation because I think that the evidence is so compelling.

I guess tied to that is the fact that I do have the privilege of seeing cases where the most extreme kind of entrenched or complex homelessness has been overcome.

I remember meeting a guy in Liverpool who had been in the same hostel for 10 years. And I said to him, what was the issue when he first got here? And he said rent arrears. He just needed some help paying off his rent. Ten years later, the state had spent a fortune institutionalising him. That’s the sort of thing I find so frustrating but motivating at the same time.

To get away from work, I try and do things that force a bit of mindfulness. I’ve taken up some fairly extreme challenges, like going cycling from London to Edinburgh and walking across the Sahara and stuff. Things like that force you to totally forget everything else. But the honest answer is that I don’t switch off enough and I probably need to sort that out.