20th December 2023
Homes for all
As of January 2023, “at least 271,000 people are recorded as homeless in England, including 123,000 children. Shelter’s detailed analysis of official homelessness figures and responses to a Freedom of Information request shows that one in 208 people in England are without a home. Of these, 2,400 people are sleeping rough on any given night, 15,000 people are in hostels or supported accommodation and nearly 250,000 are living in temporary accommodation – most of whom are families.
“The number of people living in temporary accommodation has risen by an alarming 74% in the last 10 years – something the charity argues is driven by the chronic shortage of social homes, and an over-reliance on grossly expensive and unstable private renting.
“More than two-thirds of families (68%) living in temporary accommodation have been there for over a year, showing this type of accommodation is becoming less and less “temporary” as families cannot escape homelessness due to the severe lack of affordable homes. This is a situation made even worse by the three-year freeze on housing benefit, and cost of living crisis.” (1)
Homelessness causes ill health (physical and mental), disrupts education for children, makes it harder to find and maintain gainful employment, and inhibits the building of resilient communities.
Rented accommodation can be as much of a problem as . “Wright, the chair of the Association of Chief Environmental Health Officers in England, spoke to the Guardian as part of a series shining a light on Britain’s private rental sector. He said landlords had been able to get away with renting out squalid homes because there was no legal minimum standard that private rented properties in England must meet, unlike in the social housing sector. This means it is not illegal for a landlord to rent out a property with the most serious health hazards, though they must have an energy safety certificate.”(2)
“There are now more tenants than at any point since the millennium; one in five of us in England and Wales is now a member of “generation rent”. The sector has never been more relevant, but its problems have also never been more obvious. Renters are handing over increasingly unsustainable portions of their pay in order to live in insecure tenancies, often in dangerous properties.
The government’s promised rental reform bill … aims to tackle some of these issues. Despite this, action on many problems, including no-fault evictions, may still take years to materialise.” (3) The article lists 5 reasons why renters are experiencing increasing problems.
Renting is increasingly unaffordable.
Buying a property is even more out of reach.
The UK is one of the most expensive places to rent.
Current laws make renting an option that lacks security.
The condition of many rentals is poor.
“But we should all be hopeful…. We have enough homes in this country — but the wrong people own them, and the wrong people make the wrong decisions about how much rent the rest of us should pay and what conditions we should put up with. Just as homes were taken out of public hands, they can be put back into them. Rotting window frames can be replaced. Mould can be cleared. Rents can be brought down. We have all the materials to do so — all that’s missing is political will. The government’s, and ours.
“We want to make it government policy to turn private rental properties — including those built by councils which have now fallen into the hands of private landlords — into retrofitted social homes, saving tenants millions of pounds in rent and energy bills, and the earth from millions of tonnes of carbon” (4)
“The most recent government statistics, released in November 2023, showed there were 261,189 long-term empty properties in England. That figure represents a rise of 12,556 homes compared to 2022, up 5% annually and 16% since before the pandemic in 2019. The biggest was recorded in the South West – where there has been widespread concern about second homes – with the number of long-term empty homes rising 9% in just a year. Rebecca Moore, AEH director, said: “It beggars belief that while children are growing up sharing beds in temporary accommodation, our nation has over a quarter of a million homes sitting empty. To say this is a national disgrace is a profound understatement. Long-term empties are a huge missed opportunity to invest in green retrofit and create new jobs.” (5)
Shelter has drawn up the following manifesto ask for the next general election (Read the shorter executive summary [PDF, 7MB])
“Our manifesto asks party leaders to:
- Build a new generation of social homes
- Make renting affordable
- Raise standards in rented homes
- Strengthen housing rights” (6)
(4) https://neweconomics.org/2023/04/council-housing-gave-me-a-childhood
(5) https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/how-many-empty-homes-are-there-in-the-uk/
(6) https://england.shelter.org.uk/support_us/campaigns/general_election
For more groups campaigning for homes for all – http://www.axethehousingact.org.uk/
The Green Tau 