‘I was like 500th on the list’: life inside Britain’s affordable housing crisis

Maria Berryman says she has been forced out of Frome in Somerset where she has lived for more than 10 years because of sharp rises in rents. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian

The seaside holiday town of Torquay in Devon, the sprawling metropolis of Birmingham and the remote countryside of Argyll and Bute in Scotland don’t appear to have much in common.

But, like many local authorities up and down the country, the councils governing all three have declared a housing emergency in recent months, citing reasons such as “a clear shortage of affordable housing” and “a property repair and maintenance crisis”.