In April 2026, the Crisis and Resilience Fund was launched in local authorities across England. Worth £842 million per year to March 2029, the multi-year fund which combines the Household Support Fund with Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs), has been welcomed by anti-poverty campaigners. So far, however, there has been little attention on what the Crisis and Resilience Fund means for housing and homelessness.
At this critical juncture for DHPs, this briefing draws on interviews with DHP scheme managers as part of the Safety Nets project, and longitudinal surveys of English local authorities as part of the Crisis-funded Homelessness Monitor study. We explore the role DHPs have played in supporting low-income households with their housing costs and preventing homelessness, offering reflections on what this means for the Crisis and Resilience Fund.
With a view to harnessing the potential of the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, the briefing makes recommendations to: use the newly available DWP data to proactively identify individuals most severely impacted by shortfalls in Housing Benefit; integrate Housing Payments more fully with other activities focused on homelessness prevention; ringfence the Housing Payments budget and avoid using the Crisis and Resilience Fund to pay for temporary accommodation. We argue fundamentally, however, that the Crisis and Resilience Fund cannot address the underlying gaps in the benefits system driving housing insecurity. The surest way to help low-income households avoid homelessness is to restore an adequate social security safety that reliably covers people’s rent.