Vulnerable family faces seven-year wait in temporary accommodation, as number of households stuck in limbo soars
4 October 2024, 13:04
A vulnerable family faces a wait of as long as seven years in unsuitable temporary accommodation, one of many stuck in a similar situation as the number of households waiting for a permanent home soars to record levels.
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Kelly, her partner and three children are living in a two-bed home in Eastbourne, east Sussex, after losing their private rented property earlier this year.
Kelly is sleeping in one room with her daughters, while her partner is with her son in another.
This arrangement is unsuitable for everyone in the family, especially her 15-year-old son, who is autistic, she said. Kelly herself said she had been diagnosed with manic depression, an older term for bipolar disorder.
They have only been in this situation since July, after their old landlord evicted them to sell the four-bed home they were renting - but they have been told they could be left waiting up to seven years for a local council home with the same number of rooms.
Read more: Councils set to spend over £2bn housing homeless families this year
Shelagh Fogarty on the challenges of temporary accommodation
Kelly said local estate agents told her her family wouldn’t be able to rent privately without the right guarantor - and so they turned to the council for help.
Kelly and her family are just one of a record number of households in temporary accommodation - 117,000 across the UK, according to figures released this week - including around 150,000 children.
Temporary accommodation is when a family is housed by a local authority when they have become homeless - often in private rented property leased by the council. That could be a self-contained unit, such as the home Kelly and her family are living in, or it could be a hostel or bed-and-breakfast, often without even facilities to make food.
Across the UK, the most common scenario for a family with children, such as Kelly’s, is that they leave temporary accommodation within six months. But around a fifth are in temporary accommodation for between two and five years, and another fifth are stuck for over five years.
William hopes to ‘ease pressure’ on councils tackling homelessness
Councils, already struggling with massive cost pressures, spent £1 billion between them over the past year on housing people in temporary accommodation.
Councillor Stephen Holt, the leader of Eastbourne Council, the local authority that found temporary accommodation for Kelly and her family, called on the government to do more to slash the number of people in these homes.
He said: “Local authorities up and down the UK are trying to avert a collapse in public services, but if we don’t see decisive government intervention soon, it will be too late.
“We need real financial support to alleviate the immediate budgetary risks and challenges and looking ahead, we are calling for an end to right to buy, reform of the housing revenue account, removal of the 2011 cap on the local housing allowance and the ability to borrow from the Public Works Loan Board at 0%.
“So many district and borough authorities, of all political colours, are in the same boat because the system of funding local government is broken and very sadly, it’s vulnerable people in communities who are suffering most.”
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali said it was “shocking that so many, including families with children, are spending years without a place to call home”.
Since gaining power, the government has introduced several measures that they say will alleviate the housing crisis, such as ending so-called ‘no-fault evictions’.
Ms Ali added that the government would tackle the root causes of homelessness by "putting in place lasting solutions rather than quick fixes".
She said: "We are reversing the worst housing crisis in living history by building 1.5 million new homes and are changing the law to abolish Section 21, no-fault evictions - immediately tackling one of the leading causes of homelessness.
"In addition, we've announced a new dedicated cross government group, tasked with creating a long-term strategy to end the disgraceful levels of homelessness."
