The charity Shelter reports that almost 40,000 more people will spend this Christmas homeless than last year. Such depressing figures show that the housing situation in England is spiralling out of control.
The figures of a 14 per cent increase in the number of people spending the festive season in hotels, guesthouses and other temporary accommodation were based on official figures and freedom of information requests.
Many believe that a multitude of factors have affected the country’s ability to provide housing for its entire population. Although private landlords have raised rents to record levels, housing benefit rates have been frozen. The number of households in need of council assistance for actual or threatened homelessness was six times the number of new social homes built, and the COVID pandemic meant that even more families were affected by the crisis.
Analysis by the housing charity shows that last year 140,000 children lived in temporary homes and 20,000 in hostels or supported housing.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said that this year 309,000 people would spend the festive season “in a tiny hostel room or freezing in a doorway”. She said:
It is appalling that the government has allowed thousands of families to be packed into damp and dirty B&B’s and hostel rooms, which are traumatising children and making people desperately ill.
The Ministry of Housing and Communities says it is spending £2bn to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. A Ministry spokesperson noted:
Temporary accommodation is an important way of making sure no family is without a roof over their head, but councils must ensure it is temporary and suitable for families, who have a right to appeal if it doesn’t meet their household’s needs.
Last month, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that Housing Benefit would be increased from April 2024 to match actual rents. Although 178,000 new homes were built last year, the most since 1989, this is far short of the more than 300,000 that are believed to be needed each year. The eviction ban, first promised by the government in April 2019, has been postponed indefinitely.
Homelessness numbers vary widely across England, from one in 20 people in the London borough of Newham to more than 30-fold drops in Norwich, Durham, Guildford and Cheltenham.
For crisis-hit families, Christmas can be a bleak one. This week, one group of homeless people posted pictures of their festive meals from previous years. Their festive table consisted of a tin of cold baked beans, eaten with a wooden fork from the supermarket, and a packet of reduced-to-transparent lunch meat. Theresa, who has been homeless in Bournemouth for more than a year with her four children aged 5 to 18, said:
Living through this has been the worst experience of my entire life.
Teresa had a measured life in a rented bungalow that was “supposed to be my home forever”, but lost her job at the bingo hall during the pandemic and was soon evicted after a dispute with her landlord over poor repairs and arrears.
For nine months the whole family lived in a single hotel room and her children did their homework in the toilet. They are now in temporary flat provided by the council. Theresa said:
Unless they build more houses, people are going to be in this situation for a long time.
