The Guardian view on temporary accommodation bills: short-term fixes must be backed up by housebuilding

‘Liverpool reduced hotel use down to 277 rooms, from a high of more than 1,000, and cut nightly prices from an average of £83 to £57.’ Photograph: Temilade Adelaja/Reuters

Local authorities are experiencing some of the highest temporary accommodation bills on record. Councils in England spent £2.8bn last year on homeless accommodation – a 25% increase on the year before and a 100% increase since 2020.

How did the bill get so high? The government’s redistribution of social housing stock from public to private hands is largely to blame. Instead of creating the “property-owning democracy” Margaret Thatcher envisioned, her right to buy created a nation of landlords, selling off 2m social homes – 41% of which are now rented out. This, alongside cuts to housing benefit so steep that the subsidy now covers only 2.4% of rental properties in England, ensures a steady queue of homeless people knocking on council doors – with similar problems faced by the devolved administrations. Councils end up paying landlords eye-watering amounts to house homeless people in the same properties that the government sold for as little as 30% of their market value.