As Liverpool continues to struggle with explosion in homelessness a young mum and her children are just trying to survive, reports the Liverpool Echo.

In a cramped, cluttered hotel room in Liverpool city centre, Abbie Coulthard is returning home with her children. The 31-year-old mum has just come back from picking up her eight-year-old son Rocco from school. She is carrying her tiny six-month old baby Dollie in her arms as she presses the button for the hotel elevator to take her family to the room they currently call home. Inside, there are three beds pushed together. Abbie sleeps in the main double bed. There is a single bed for Rocco and a smaller unit for baby Dollie to sleep on in between them.

Drying clothes hang from the curtain pole in the corner of the room, in front of a window that doesn’t open, with a small fridge balanced on the ledge. On the table near the room’s television are a kettle and an air fryer – this family’s only means of making or heating food. A garish piece of artwork clings to the wall of the room, undoubtedly aimed at guests heading to the city for a party, not a family just trying to survive. This poky room, busy with household items has been where Abbie and her kids have been forced to live for the past five gruelling weeks. The story of how her life went from normal to out of control is a sadly familiar one in this city.

Liverpool has been experiencing an acute housing and homelessness crisis over the past couple of years. There are around 1250 families in this city who, like Abbie and her kids, find themselves living in emergency temporary accommodation that is clearly inappropriate. In the last financial year, the cash-strapped city council was forced to pay out more than £21m purely on housing people in hotels and bed and breakfasts. A staggering 12,000% increase over the last five years. This year could see that bill hit £30 million. Behind those grim numbers are stories like Abbie’s.

“We lived in a normal house in Hunts Cross, but the landlord put the rent up and then said he wanted to sell the house,” explains the 31-year-old mum. “We got a Section 21 eviction notice and we had to move out.” Before this, Abbie had operated a café and considered herself to be doing fairly well, but like with many people who are forced out of their homes – things can quickly spiral. Cost of living pressures forced her to close the business and with nowhere for her and her children to live – she desperately contacted Liverpool City Council for help. At this point Abbie and her children joined the growing number of people living a transient existence in this city, being moved from temporary spot to temporary spot, wherever the council could find. Some locations were a very long way from home.

“At first they put us near Warrington in a motel room at a service station full of trucks,” explains Abbie. “There was nowhere to make food, we survived on meal deals from WH Smith, I had nowhere to sterilise the baby’s bottles, it wasn’t good at all.” After this, the family were remarkably moved all the way to Manchester. The facilities were better but the distance made it almost impossible for Abbie to get 8-year-old Rocco to his school in south Liverpool. Eventually the family were brought back to Liverpool and are currently residing in a city centre hotel, which the ECHO has agreed not to reveal the location of.

What has complicated an already very difficult situation is that Abbie has a debilitating health issue in the form of serious cluster headaches. She has been prescribed oxygen tank therapy to relieve the serious pain she faces from the condition, but says this has never been taken into account by those placing her in temporary accommodation. “I have been here for five weeks now,” she explains. “When I first got here I was saying I need to get my oxygen delivered and they said I couldn’t have that here. It was health and safety or something. But I really need it. I haven’t been able to take it to the other places they put me either. I am trying to just keep everything together,” she adds. “I have got to, for these two. But my head kicks off every couple of hours if I am up all night, I struggle. It’s not fit for purpose being here, especially with my health condition. Its just a nightmare. We can’t stay here.”

While we are talking, Rocco, just in from school, jumps on the bed to grab a drink from a mini-fridge that is resting on the window ledge of the hotel room. “That’s my mini fridge,” he says proudly. “It’s going to go in my new room when I get one.” Abbie says she struggles with the impact her situation is having on her son. “He hates it, he can’t play out with his mates or anything, we have no life here,” she explains with a resigned expression. “I am trying to keep him happy. We went to Taskers the other day and I was asking him what he wants for his new room. And he was like ‘have we got a house?’ and I had to say ‘not yet.’ It’s not easy.”

For anyone looking after a six-month baby and an eight-year-old son would be tough, but to do it in these cramped conditions is another matter. “We try and stay out of the room as much as possible,” says Abbie. “We can’t even cook a meal at home. All we can do is use the air fryer and the fridge.” In today’s precarious society, where rising rents, cost of living pressures and a lack of affordable housing have created a perfect storm of problems for families, Abbie’s is a story that could happen to so many. “This could happen to anyone,” she says. “I had my business, I had a house, I was driving around in a nice car. And then this happened to me overnight. I have never depended on anyone before, I’ve worked all my life and the one time I am now struggling it feels like I am just getting fobbed off.” It’s just scary how everything can spiral so quickly,” she adds. “I just feel like I am drowning.”

The ECHO has made enquiries about Abbie’s housing situation with the city council. It is understood she has just recently been offered a property in north Liverpool, but is concerned about accepting it because it is even further away from Rocco’s school than her current base.

Ahead of the Spending Review on 11 June, leading economist Ann Pettifor wrote an op–ed for Shelter on why major government investment is needed to address the housing emergency.

England is facing the worst housing emergency since the Second World War. The number of children in temporary accommodation has reached yet another record of 165,500, while local authorities are on the brink of collapse, spending three times more on temporary accommodation than a decade ago, with a further rise of 71% projected by the end of this Parliament if nothing changes. With the chancellor’s June Spending Review just a couple of days away, there is growing pressure on the government to abandon failed fiscal rules and work with the Bank of England to invest in genuinely affordable social rent homes at scale.

To be clear the problem is not planning policy or supply-side issues. The government’s straitjacket is homemade; it is its orthodox fiscal and monetary policy. George Osborne’s austerity shadow looms large over a British economy that has still not fully recovered from the 2007–9 global financial crisis, and is crawling along at sub 1% growth. The refusal by successive governments to invest in social housing is due in part to a persistent misreading of the role of public finances in stimulating both public and private economic activity. From 2010 onwards, political leaders chose austerity over investment, despite historically low interest rates, spare capacity and ample fiscal space. The results are now painfully clear: a weakened economy and its inevitable counterpart, the budget deficit, compounded by spiralling housing benefit costs, rising private rents, growing inequality, and stagnant productivity.

For too long the Treasury has insisted that public spending must be tightly constrained by current tax receipts. This is a misunderstanding of how modern economies function. Government financing does not depend on tax revenues for investment. As many of us know from our own experience of employment, tax revenues are a consequence of investment. Treasury intransigence is matched by the Bank of England’s aggressive use of Quantitative Tightening to burden the government with costs amounting to £20 billion over 2.5 years. In other words, monetary policy is actively interfering in and undermining fiscal policy. Furthermore, the Bank ignores its mandate under Part 2, Section 11 of the 1998 Bank of England Act: to maintain price stability, and to support the economic policy of Her Majesty’s Government, including its objectives for growth and employment.

As Keynes taught, public investment at a time of private sector weakness drives both private and public investment, employment, income and tax receipts. If targeted at the creation of new assets that are revenue generating, the spending will pay for itself. Social housing is a prime example. Shelter’s call for the creation of 90,000 new public assets – social rent homes – a year, costing just over 1% of GDP, would not only address urgent need, but would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, boost private supply chains and generate tax revenues. Kept as assets on the State’s balance sheet, the social housing stock will continue to reduce public debt. Furthermore, investment in housing would increase the skills, the stability and the mobility of labour. Research shows such investment would begin returning a profit to the Exchequor within 11 years, while reducing demand for housing benefit and temporary accommodation.

By contrast, Britain’s current policy is to prioritise day-to-day spending on private market subsidies over capital investment in public assets. No wonder the housing benefit bill has surged, transferring public money into inflated private rents, rather than in long-term, income-generating public assets. Without a bold, state-led programme of social house-building, those missing homes won’t just be a number, they’ll directly translate into greater hardship and homelessness for families and higher public costs.

If the chancellor is serious about addressing both the housing emergency and the country’s sluggish economic performance, she must finally break with the Osborne legacy of the past 15 years. Investment in social housing is not a cost, but a strategic choice that strengthens public finances over time. Failing to act now will only compound the problem for families, councils and the wider economy. The opportunity is clear. The question is whether the chancellor will seize it.

Supported housing exists to help people to live as independently as possible, helping improve their quality of life, their wellbeing, their health, and their employment prospects. Yet people in supported housing face a specific barrier and disincentive to work due to the way the welfare system is configured. Whereas people in receipt of benefits in the Private Rented Sector become steadily better off the more they work, people in supported housing see their benefits taken away more quickly and can actually become worse off when they work more hours.

This is because of an anomaly in the benefit system where people in supported housing are still receiving Housing Benefit for their rent but are on Universal Credit for their living costs. The way these two benefits interact, and the high Housing Benefit taper rate (set at 65%), means that people hit a ‘cliff edge’ after which they become worse off as they increase their hours. This puts residents at risk of accruing arrears as the rent becomes unaffordable.

Because of this cliff edge and the fear of people not being able to afford their rent, we often see residents’ securing jobs that they need to turn down because they are ‘too many hours’. People with existing full-time jobs are asking to have their hours reduced or are giving up their employment entirely if part-time hours are not possible. Residents can also understandably be anxious about entering employment whilst in supported housing, due to the complexity and risk associated with the current benefit rules.

When St Mungo’s clients were asked in its 2023 survey – ‘What barriers put you off from going into work, if any?’ 27% of its residents stated ‘I’m concerned that working whilst living in homelessness accommodation will cause problems with my benefits’. We want our residents to experience the benefits of employment whilst living in supported housing; the current benefit system does not support this.

The solution

The Government can eliminate the work disincentive faced by all residents in supported housing by making a combination of minor adjustments to the benefits system:

1. We recommend that the Housing Benefit disregard is increased from £5 to £57. The Housing Benefit disregard is the amount of a person’s earnings or income that is excluded from benefit calculations, so increasing this would ensure that most people living in supported accommodation would not face a financial cliff edge and instead would be incrementally better off as they increase their working hours. Increasing disregard rates supports employment goals, reduces benefit traps, and promotes long-term independence; it could be the difference between a stable step forward to independence or a return to crisis.
2. Reduce the taper rate from 65% to 55% to bring it in line with Universal Credit. In addition to raising the disregard, parity between the Universal Credit and Housing Benefit taper rates is required to remove the work disincentive. We recommend the government reduces the Housing Benefit taper rate from 65% to 55% to bring it in line with Universal Credit. This would effectively reduce the amount that people living in supported accommodation are being taxed for accessing work, as their Housing Benefit would be reduced at a lower rate than it currently is (55p for every pound earned, as opposed to 65p on every pound).

To eliminate the cliff edge for all, both of these measures are needed. Taken together, these two measures will remove barriers to employment that are currently experienced by people in supported housing. This will create a clear progression whereby as people increase their hours and progress in work, they see their incomes increase and can build financial resilience to move on into independent accommodation.

Impact

• Supported housing residents would not be worse off when they increase their working hours and instead would see a rise in their income.
• Supported housing residents would be more likely to maintain their employment or enter employment because they would no longer be at risk of losing income and accruing rent arrears.

Conclusion

Through a combination of measures to resolve this anomaly in the benefit system, the Government can open opportunities for people in supported housing to gain and retain employment. There is a clear desire to work among supported housing residents, with a St Mungo’s survey finding that 63% of its residents in supported housing want to work and 5% are already in work.

Implementing these changes would ensure that supported housing residents are genuinely better off for every additional hour worked. These measures would remove key financial disincentives, align Housing Benefit with Universal Credit, and give supported housing residents the confidence to access employment without the risk of losing income or falling into rent arrears. In doing so, the Government can support more individuals on the path to financial independence and make work pay for all.

For any questions or follow up, please contact Liz McCulloch (Assistant Head of Policy and Public Affairs) at elizabeth.mcculloch@mungos.org

Hundreds of people on a Kirkby housing estate are being made homeless after two tower blocks were declared ‘unsafe’ by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS), reports the Liverpool Echo.

The Echo has seen a Knowsley Council letter sent to 160 households at Willow Rise and Beech Rise confirming they will have to permanently vacate their homes in a matter of weeks. The local authority explained MFRS has been forced to serve a prohibition notice due to the management company’s failure to complete essential repairs. The tower blocks are located on Roughwood Drive in Kirkby and have hundreds of residents – both rented tenants and leaseholders. The buildings are owned by TR Marketing Ltd and the headlessor of both Willow Rise and Beech Rise is Rockwell (FC100) Limited.

The leaseholders elect a board who then contract a management company to take care of health and safety issues, general maintenance and service charges. Dempster Management Services Limited (DMS) took on this contract after reaching an agreement with the board, Parklands Management Company Ltd, in 2023. At the start of May, Dempster informed all residents and leaseholders it had decided to terminate its contract with Beech Rise and Willow Rise, effective immediately. It means residents have been living without a management company.

One of these flats belongs to Arunee Leerasiri who has lived in Willow Rise for the last two and a half years, but has found the last 12 months particularly difficult: “It’s been stressful, very stressful. We’ve been living with an increasing sense of fear with no solutions or answers to our questions. I am beyond devastated. I work from home, I am now about to be homeless. I love my home I spent time and money to make it nice, and now it’s being stripped away from me. It’s really unjust what’s happening to people.”

The letter from Knowsley Council arrived on Tuesday morning May 27 and was followed by a statement published on its website, stating: “Earlier this month, the Council and MFRS became aware that the current management company no longer intends to carry out the remedial works that are needed to the buildings. Lifts in both buildings were out of order, and the lack of funding would mean that they would not be repaired. In addition, the current management company would no longer be in a position to fund the waking watch from 21 May 2025.” Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) said it had worked with successive management companies to ensure fire safety obligations were being met and issued enforcement notices demanding remediation works be carried out. However, the MFRS confirmed these works had not been progressed and it has exhausted all other possibilities.

The Echo first reported on problems at these tower blocks last year when residents came forward to complain about the conditions. One article detailed the plight of Kathleen Rosenthal, 68, who felt ‘trapped’ in her home because of the broken down lifts. The Echo also highlighted the plight of Joe, who said he was forced out of his Willow Rise flat due to major leaks in the block resulting in his electricity being cut off, adding at the time: “This has caused immense stress and anxiety, as I’ve lost the safety and stability of my home.”

More than seven months later, the Echo returned to the tower blocks after being contacted by several residents claiming the issues we reported on last year are still ongoing. Furthermore, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service had issued enforcement notices due to ongoing fire safety issues.

The latest person forced out of his home by the electrical problems was Peter Barry-Ross, 48, who returned from holiday on March 8 to discover the power had been cut off in his flat. He said: “I was in complete darkness. Since then, I’ve been sofa surfing and staying with friends and family because I’ve not been able to live here for the last two months. I contacted Dempster and they assured me they were dealing with the leaks and found the source of the issue.” The Echo understands Dempster identified the source of the leaks, but has been unable to contact the flats’ owners despite numerous letters and notices. To compound the problem, it’s unclear whether the management company has the legal right to force entry to the properties – even in circumstances such as these when the safety of the building is at risk.

The Echo had been contacted by Peter and other residents after they received a letter from Dempster stating its intention to terminate the management contract with immediate effect. The letter stated: “Regrettably, the situation has now become untenable. The scale of risk — both operational and legal — has increased to the point where we have no choice but to terminate our management services with immediate effect.” Dempster also addressed the damage caused by the water leaks and the impact on the fire safety equipment which is now exhibiting a series of faults. As a result, Dempster said a ‘waking watch’ was introduced at a cost of £3,744.00 per day. ‘Waking watch’ involves 24/7 monitoring recommended by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) where trained personnel patrol a building to detect fire and manage evacuation. The money Dempster were using to pay for the waking watch was coming from the accrued funds built up via the leaseholder board – funds which have now expired.

A MFRS spokesperson said: “The management company would not fund the ‘waking watch’ beyond 21 May 2025. The funding of the waking watch has been extended by Knowsley Council for a short period at their cost, despite them not owning the buildings, but this is not sustainable. This means the buildings will no longer be safe for residents to live in after the current waking watch ends and MFRS will have no choice but to issue a prohibition notice. Once the prohibition notice is served, MFRS confirmed that residents must leave immediately and will need to be rehoused.” It means hundreds of residents are now at risk of homelessness with no certainty on where they will be living in the next few weeks.

This is the situation facing Christopher Penfold-Ivany, 53, who lives on floor 13 of Willow Rise and is currently undergoing treatment for a serious health issue. Because of the broken down lifts, he has been forced to walk up and down 26 flights of stairs whenever he has to go out for a medical appointment. Responding to the letter from Knowsley Council, Mr Penfold-Ivany said: “It’s awful but I’m not surprised because the buildings have gotten so bad that this was inevitable, but let’s be clear, this should never have been allowed to happen. It is a catastrophic situation that has remained unresolved for weeks and months. Repairs have not been done and the lifts are not working and residents are left stranded – people who can’t get up and down the stairs because of health issues. Right now, I don’t know where I’m going to live, but before that, I don’t know how I’m going to move – how can anyone move because the lifts don’t work and there’s lots of people’s belongings here such as furniture. The thought of moving is very stressful and could have a serious impact on people’s health. We’ve been plunged into uncertainty and we’re all effectively being made homeless.”

Leader of Knowsley Council, Cllr Graham Morgan, said the Local Authority’s first duty is to protect residents and has stepped into offer support. The council are now in the process of contacting all residents to ensure they receive urgent support, which could include emergency re-housing. Cllr Morgan added: “These residents have been let down and neglected for years by the various private sector companies involved in the ownership and management of these buildings. They have been allowed to deteriorate into a terrible condition, with false promises made about repairs that have never materialised.”

Member of Parliament for Knowsley, Anneliese Midgley, said she has been contacted by concerned residents and is calling for a long-term plan to address the issues raised by the developments at Beech Rise and Willow Rise, adding: “They have been let down repeatedly by a revolving door of private management companies, while the conditions in the buildings have gone from bad to worse. It cannot be right that residents in 2025 are being forced out of their homes not because of their actions, but because of years of neglect by companies with legal responsibilities they have clearly failed to meet. We now need Government leadership — both to ensure residents are rehoused safely and to recover the public funds that have been spent stepping in where the private sector has walked away.”

The Echo offered Dempster the opportunity to comment further on this article.

Almost half of adults fear an unexpected £100 bill would leave them struggling to pay their rent or mortgage, reports the Mirror.

A survey for the Salvation Army found 48% of people were extremely or very concerned over an extra expense. A further 22% of the 1,000 people polled said they were “fairly concerned” while 29% said they were not concerned, the charity said.

The Salvation Army’s Captain John Clifton said: “When nearly half of people are so financially fragile that they are living in fear of a £100 bill, something has gone very wrong — and the Government must take notice.” He said to protect those who are struggling, the government must unfreeze housing benefit or risk pushing “thousands more over the cliff edge into homelessness”.

At the Budget last year Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the local housing allowance (LHA) will remain at existing levels until 2026. It was also frozen multiple times during the Conservatives’ 14-year spell in government.

Mr Clifton added: “Rent and bills have gone up and welfare support has gone down. Every day at our food banks, debt and employment advice services, churches and community centres we see the reality of what it’s like for people who can’t afford to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families.”

“With so many living on a knife-edge, the risk of homelessness is no longer something that happens to ‘other people’ — it’s becoming a real concern for ordinary households across the country.”

A government spokesman said: “No one should be in poverty. That’s why we’ve extended the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments for 2025-26 to protect the most vulnerable while we fix the fundamentals of the social security system, so people don’t rely on crisis support.”

“Alongside this, we have increased the National Living Wage, uprated benefits and are helping over one million households having introduced a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions, on top of reviewing Universal Credit to ensure it can best contribute to our aims from tackling poverty and making work pay.”

“Meanwhile, we are boosting the Affordable Housing Programme by £2bn which will build 18,000 new social and affordable homes – getting families into safe and decent homes while supporting our Plan for Change milestone of 1.5 million new homes by the next Parliament and driving economic growth.”