Voices from the frontline of the housing crisis
Housing shortage: More home are desperately needed (Photo: Shutterstock)
A four-month investigation by the Bureau has established the scale of the UK’s housing crisis. Rising private rents, a shortage of affordable housing and benefit cuts are having a huge impact on the country’s poor and vulnerable families.
As more households are placed into bed and breakfast accommodation, hostels and shelters, stretched London councils are forced to look beyond their borders to place vulnerable families. This often means moving families into other boroughs, sometimes far away from the schools, jobs and support networks that they rely on.
There are 76,790 children currently living in temporary accommodation according to the latest government statistics. The cost of housing these families is huge. The Bureau investigation found that the UK’s 12 biggest cities has spent nearly £2bn on temporary accommodation since 2009.
Bureau journalists spoke to many people dealing with the housing crisis in and around the capital. Here are some of the things they said.
An education welfare officer in Newham
‘I don’t think you can expect a child to achieve if they’re in a permanent state of flux. Some teachers are not aware [their student is homeless] until they disappear. There’s a seat empty. And then you find out they’re in Birmingham.’
Colin Young, chief executive officer of Slough YMCA
Every day I get calls from London councils asking if I can house a family for them in temporary accommodation. I am now seriously considering setting up another hostel in Slough just to provide temporary accommodation for out of borough clients”.
Mark Lancaster – head of school, St Ann’s Church of England Primary School, Haringey
‘We had one family where the mother had just given birth and the dad was working nights and he had to come home from his shift and bring his child to school from another borough. If a child is late, even if it is only by half and hour, that is still two and a half hours of learning they are missing a week and it can be very disruptive for the class too.’
Gloria Saffrey, director of Haringey charity Christian Action and Response in Society
‘We need to keep our housing stock for Haringey residents. We are losing it to other boroughs who can pay more. On top of that, increasingly private landlords don’t want to take on tenants who are on benefits, making it even harder to find places for them.’
Robert Anderson, Labour leader of Slough council
‘If authorities put people in our area with complex needs, or even just families, they need to inform us. If we know where they have come from we can make sure that the borough does not shirk [its] responsibilities and just pass on their more difficult clients.’
Keith Fernett, director of Newham-based Anchor House, a retraining centre that helps homeless people back into housing
‘What we’ve been seeing is a transfer of the inner-London homeless problem into this borough. Poor Newham gets hit.’
Conservative leader of Dartford council, Jeremy Kite
‘London councils receive all the benefits of high levels of council tax which arise from their property values, and this means there’s a strong moral case for them solving their own housing problems.’
Enfield Councillor, Andrew Stafford
‘It’s economic cleansing. Some feel we should just pass them through and onwards to places like Stoke and Peterborough but I don’t agree.’
Hanane Toumi, 36 and a single mother of two young children, living in temporary accommodation in Neasden, Brent
‘My daughter asks, “Mum, why don’t we … move this house so it’s closer to the school?”‘
Related story: Britain’s housing crisis – The impact on children
Related story: Scale of UK housing crisis revealed
