Homeless Families Being Priced Out Of London

The number of homeless families being moved out of London and into temporary accommodation elsewhere has gone up five-fold since 2012, the BBC reports.

According to figures released by London Councils (LC), the number of placements rose from 113 between April and June 2012 to 551 between December and April 2016. Local Authorities are forced into this by rising temporary housing costs, which have also doubled since 2012. London boroughs spent £203m on housing rented on a per-night basis in the 2015 financial year, up from £90m in 2011.

Kate Webb, head of policy at housing charity Shelter, explained high London property prices mean “councils are finding it much harder to find landlords that will work with them”. Councils are struggling to secure long term leases on properties to use for temporary accommodation, so are forced into per-night rental agreements, or to look beyond the capital, she said.

The number of nights rented under these arrangements has more than tripled from 540,000 to 1.8m over the past five years, 14 London councils confirmed. “Because councils can’t find anything affordable and suitable in their own local area, then they do often have no choice but to look to cheaper areas outside of the capital,” Ms. Webb confirmed.

Some councils are looking at alternative solutions to the shortage of properties, such as converting former industrial units into temporary accommodation and building prefabricated, modular housing on council-owned land. But cost increases are forcing London boroughs to look further afield for temporary accommodation. Most of these families were sent to towns in the south-east such as Thurrock, Medway and Luton, though a number of families were housed in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands. There has also been a rise in the number of families moved to another borough within London. While 2449 families were placed outside their borough between June and September in 2011, this rose to 4883 between December and March 2016, the figures show.

David Smith, policy officer at the Residential Landlords Association, said: “One of the biggest problems that councils have is that they are not addressing people being evicted from properties quickly enough.” He explained councils tend to leave people in a property to the very last minute, before looking for short term emergency housing solutions. “If that was being addressed more quickly, then these expensive temporary housing solutions could be avoided,” he said.

Sir Steve Bullock, executive lead on housing for London Councils, and Mayor of Lewisham, explained why councils were struggling: “We have more people who need housing, in this case short term temporary accommodation, than we are able to access in London, because of the London housing crisis that we all know about,” he said. “Most of us are trying to juggle both things, and to do both, but I can understand why when we are dealing with this very immediate issue of homelessness, it does look like we are fire fighting, but we are also looking at the long term,” he added.

The BBC sent freedom of information requests to all London boroughs on the costs of their nightly charged temporary accommodation. Twenty boroughs provided full information, though some responses also included nightly paid, shared accommodation.