I have been known to complain about my flat. The road is loud and polluted. The upstairs neighbours ripped up their carpet so I can now feel every footstep and hear every argument. The local foxes practise their jujutsu all night long. But it is warm and secure.
The rise of homelessness in the capital can hardly go unnoticed by anyone who leaves the house, with underpasses and alleyways dotted with sleeping bags, cardboard and tents. Yet the thing about the homelessness crisis is that the streets don't even tell half the story. That is because the vast majority of homeless Londoners can be found in temporary accommodation.
Statistics too can only ever tell a partial story, but here are just a few, all provided by this excellent and urgent report by London Councils:
1: the number of homeless children in every London classroom on average
58: the percentage increase in rough sleeping in the capital compared with 2014
662: the percentage rise in the number of families placed in bed and breakfasts by London boroughs in the past two years
183,000: the number of Londoners estimated to be homeless and living in temporary accommodation – the highest ever recorded
320,000: the number of households on waiting lists for social housing in the capital
£4 million: the collective amount spent on temporary accommodation for homeless Londoners by London boroughs
£250 million: the amount boroughs are forecast to overspend on their homelessness budgets this year, despite an increase in funding.
At this point, it is worth highlighting that the term 'temporary accommodation' can be highly misleading, because some households find themselves in it for many years as permanent housing cannot be found for them. This is due to the general shortage of affordable housing in the capital.
London faces something of a perfect storm. Rents are 20 per cent above their pre-Covid levels, while supply is down 41 per cent. Despite this, prior to April 2024, Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates were frozen, reducing the number of affordable properties available to low income households.
Indeed, research from the estate agent Savills and the London School of Economics found that only 2.3 per cent of London listings on Rightmove were affordable in 2022-23 to those needing LHA to help pay their rent, down from from 18.9 per cent in 2020-21. All this makes it harder for local authorities to find accommodation and increases the reliance on B&Bs, which are both expensive for councils and detrimental to residents, particularly children.
The financial impact on local authorities, and the people who rely on them for other services, is immense. As previously reported, Newham in east London is among those boroughs proposing extreme cost-cutting measures as a consequences of its temporary housing bill. As political correspondent Rachel Burford reports, this year alone it anticipates it will overspend by £47m, of which £31m is for housing homeless families.
The report concludes with a range of recommendations, from boosting grants to removing all restrictions preventing boroughs from reinvesting Right to Buy sales receipts in building replacement homes. Homelessness and the rise of temporary accommodation may not get as much play as national insurance or the freezing income tax thresholds at the Budget, but it is a massive and urgent challenge, one that local authorities cannot be left to manage alone.
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