A surge in people being forced to live in bed and breakfasts and other temporary homes in England is costing the taxpayer £1.7bn a year, “shameful” council data analysed by the Local Government Association has revealed.
The worsening shortage of social housing and increasingly unaffordable private rents are among reasons councils are now paying for 104,000 households to live in temporary accommodation – more than at any time in the past 25 years.
The closure of Home Office-funded hotels for Afghan refugees in the coming weeks was expected to exacerbate the problem, town hall leaders said, as they called an emergency summit for next week to discuss the still “rapidly” increasing cost, which they said was “wholly unsustainable”.
Housing campaigners said temporary accommodation included “cramped hostels and grotty B&Bs, where family members are forced to share beds and children have no space to play or do their homework”.
The annual cost of paying rents would be enough to build about 100,000 new homes over five years. It is twice as high as it was in 2015-16. It rose to £1.6bn last year and has now risen again by 9%.
Stephen Holt, the leader of Eastbourne borough council, which is hosting a summit on Tuesday of more than 100 councils, said: “The situation is stark. Councils provide a safety net for the most vulnerable people … and that safety net is at real risk of failing.”
More than 130,000 children are living in temporary housing – the highest ever number.
The LGA, the councils’ umbrella group, is demanding the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, use his coming autumn budget statement to increase housing benefit to make more private rented homes affordable to people on welfare, and to reform housing rules to allow councils to build more social housing.
“Council budgets are being squeezed and the chronic shortage of suitable housing across the country means that councils are increasingly having to turn to alternative options for accommodation at a significant cost,” said Darren Rodwell, the leader of the London borough of Barking and Dagenham and the LGA’s housing spokesperson. “Councils need to be given the powers and resources to build enough social homes for their residents so they can create a more prosperous place to live, with healthier and happier communities.”
The LGA said asylum and resettlement schemes were adding to the problem. The increased pace and scale of asylum decisions, the closure of Home Office-run hotels for Afghan refugees over the next few weeks and ongoing support for homeless Ukrainian and Afghan households are increasing pressure on councils’ capacity to house people who otherwise face homelessness.
The number of households in temporary accommodation had previously peaked in 2004, before falling steadily, according to the House of Commons library. This trend changed in December 2011, when the number of households in temporary accommodation began to rise year-on-year.
The housing charity Shelter warned last year that temporary accommodation was too often not temporary. It said that two-thirds of families had been in the supposedly transitional housing for over a year, rising to four-fifths in London. Some families have been there for more than a decade.
It was creating a “new kind of government-provided housing”, it said, “but one without tenancy rights, specific standards, or effective oversight”.
“It’s shameful that thousands of children across the country are growing up without a safe and secure place to call home,” said Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter. “As homelessness reaches record levels, the government cannot continue to ignore this crisis … As an immediate solution, the government must use the autumn statement to unfreeze housing benefit so people can afford their rents. However, the only lasting solution to the housing emergency is to invest in genuinely affordable social homes with rents tied to local incomes.”
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to reducing the need for temporary accommodation by preventing homelessness before it occurs in the first place, which is why we are providing councils with £1bn through the homelessness prevention grant over three years. We are also delivering a fairer private rented sector for tenants and landlords through the renters reform bill which includes abolishing Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions.”
• This article was amended on 27 October 2023. An earlier version referred to Afghan asylum seekers when refugees was meant.
