The wait for family-size social housing has risen to more than 100 years in parts of England, which charities have condemned as “ludicrous” and a “national scandal”.
Analysis from the National Housing Federation (NHF), Crisis and Shelter found that in 32 local authority areas across England, the wait for a home with at least three bedrooms was longer than 18 years – the duration of an entire childhood.
The worst three councils, all of which are in London, have waiting lists exceeding 100 years, while nine local authorities have waiting lists of more than 50 years.
Kate Henderson, the chief executive of the NHF, said: “The fact that families in so many parts of the country face waiting lists for an affordable home longer than their children’s entire childhood is a national scandal.
“We are allowing hundreds of thousands of children to grow up in damaging temporary homes, in cramped and poor-quality conditions and with little privacy. This is no way for a child to grow up and these children deserve better.”
More than 1.3 million families are on waiting lists for social homes in England, an increase of 37% since 2015, and a record 164,040 children are homeless and stuck in temporary accommodation, double the number in 2012.
Housing charities said families were increasingly having to live in overcrowded conditions, unaffordable and insecure private rented homes, or ending up homeless because of the lack of social housing.
They said councils were resorting to more extreme measures and stricter criteria to keep their waiting lists down, so the true number of households in need of social housing was likely to be much higher.
Angie, 44, lives in a crowded private rented home with her husband and four children in Tower Hamlets, east London. She has been on the social housing waiting list for 16 years and said she was not sure she would ever receive a home.
The average wait for a family-size home in Tower Hamlets is more than 40 years, the analysis found.
“I’ve been bidding for so long. I’m 44. How long am I going to live? When am I going to get my place? And how long will I actually have to live and enjoy that place?” Angie said. “And it’s not about moving, because even if I relocate somewhere else, it’s the same thing. I’ve lost hope.”
She said she bid religiously every week and would prefer a three-bedroom property as they are more common, but had been told she only qualifies for a four-bedroom home. “Nothing comes up. I can go weeks and weeks without a property coming up. And when they do, I’m like a hundred and something in the list,” she said.
Her 17-year-old son sleeps in a small box room while her three daughters, aged 15, 12 and seven, share a bedroom. Sometimes, Angie and her husband, who recently had a heart attack and had to spend more time at home to recover, sleep in the living room to give the children more space.
“The children are always bickering, they feel claustrophobic, there’s never any space and they’re growing,” she said. “My rent is high but I have no central heating. I have a child who’s asthmatic, and you can feel the cold draught everywhere.
“We can’t make it our own and the children have never been able to feel that this place is their home.”
She urged the government to invest in affordable housing, and said it would help solve many of the country’s ailments, such as rising mental health problems.
“We might be on low income, and we might be on benefits, and we might be stuck in a system, but we still have the right to the quality of life that everybody else does,” she said.
The country’s three leading housing campaign groups urged the government to announce a financial boost for the social housing sector in the spending review in June, and to commit to building 90,000 social homes a year to meet demand.
Last year, 8,747 new social homes were built – 75% fewer than in 2010.
Matt Downie, the chief executive of Crisis, said: “It’s ludicrous that in some areas of the country the wait for a social home is more than average life expectancy. This must spur action at the upcoming spending review. The government must commit to building social housing at scale.”
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “These findings highlight the scale and devastating impact of the social housing crisis we’ve inherited. We’re taking urgent action to fix this through our plan for change, injecting £2bn to help deliver the biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation, investing in homelessness services, and bringing forward overdue reforms to the right-to-buy scheme that will protect the stock of existing social housing.”
