Time for long-term solutions to homelessness

Posted: February 27, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bed and breakfast, Homelessness, Social housing, Temporary accommodation |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

No more sticking plaster politics was the promise from Labour at the general election seven months ago.

The 126,000 homeless families and 164,000 children living in temporary accommodation in England (according to the latest statistics published on Thursday) would surely agree that is way past time for short-term fixes. 

Legally entitled to permanent social housing, they can instead be stuck in temporary homes for years, frequently miles away from work, friends and family, often in bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) and sometimes living in conditions that contribute to the deaths of their children. 

Local authorities facing soaring costs for the most insecure housing that have pushed some to the brink of bankruptcy would also quickly agree.

And so did homelessness minister Rushanara Ali as she told a summit on ending homelessness organised by Crisis on Tuesday: ‘We must address this crisis and deliver long-term solutions’.

But until the spending review in the Spring and homelessness strategy to follow we will have to be satisfied with announcements like last week’s extra £300 million for affordable homes plus this week’s extra £30 million in emergency homelessness funding and pledge to extend Awaab’s Law to temporary accommodation.

Research for Crisis by the London School of Economics reveals that net local authority expenditure on the most temporary form of temporary housing, nightly-paid accommodation like B&Bs, has quintupled in the last six years from £135 million in 2017/28 to £732 million in 2023/24.

On the current trajectory, it says the bill will rise by another 63 per cent in the next three years to reach £1.2 billion in 2026/27 for 68,700 households. 

The research – and the pledge on Awaab’s Law by Rushanara Ali – both featured at a summit on ending homelessness organised by Crisis on Tuesday.

The minister acknowledged the scale of the problem in her speech and said it is ‘not acceptable’ for families to be placed in B&Bs ‘without appropriate facilities, without cooking facilities, without space to play, or even appropriate space to be able to sleep at night’.

She went on: ‘So I want to see the use of emergency accommodation for homeless families reduced and to eliminate the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for families other than in genuine emergency.’ 

With 5,400 families with children in B&Bs at the last count – that implies a significant programme to buy and build more permanent social homes.

Crisis called for support for 90,000 new social homes a year, the restoration of the link between Local Housing Allowance and local rents and the lifting of the cap on temporary accommodation subsidy paid to councils.

As chief executive Matt Downie put it: ‘In the next few months, the Westminster government has a once in a generation opportunity to build a future free from homelessness. With an ambitious government strategy, ministers can drive the delivery of genuinely affordable housing, and they should pull every lever available to them, including keeping local housing allowance in line with the lowest local rents.’

With health and defence the priorities for the spending review, the Treasury will need some convincing and the danger is that the strategy will be tailored to fit the money available rather than the other way around. 

A strategy should, at a minimum, set targets for reducing the number of households in temporary accommodation to the levels seen under the last Labour government. They are currently two and a half times higher.

At the worst end of that, there are now 3,470 families with children in bed and breakfasts beyond the theoretical six-week legal limit. That is 22 times higher than the 160 in 2010. 

That will require action in the short, medium and long term: the reversal of benefit cuts that cause homelessness; funding for prevention; funding to acquire social homes and funding to build them. 

However, the strategy is contending with a temporary system that has become so entrenched and institutionalised as to be almost permanent. 

An investigation by Inside Housing and The I this week revealed the names of the 20 companies making the most money from the total of £2 billion a year spent by councils in England on temporary accommodation.

They include agents like Theori Property Management, Elliott Leigh Properties and Finefair who offer ‘guaranteed rents’ to landlords and are receiving more than £50 million each. 

But Notting Hill Genesis, top with £85 million and RMG, part of Places for People, sixth with £36 million, also manage significant amounts of temporary accommodation.

I did a similar FOI investigation five years ago and what struck me was that exactly the same names were high on the list then. What’s changed is that the amounts of money involved are even higher.

Some companies even claimed to be providing ‘social housing’ or ‘social housing solutions’ and in a sense they are in providing temporary accommodation that councils desperately need in a system that has almost become entrenched as a new tenure. 

At the sharp end, the immediate financial incentives are for councils to cut their costs by acquiring temporary accommodation themselves or agreeing private sector leasing deals. Those fixes may reduce the costs but perpetuate the system.

That system has not come about by accident but as a direct result of short-term fixes and long-term decisions not taken. Unravelling it will take time, money and a strategy.  

---