Homelessness is a tragedy for all those it affects and is one of the most visible signs of the nation’s housing crisis. Councils are providing temporary housing for over 82,000 households, including over 123,000 children.
Key messages
- Homelessness is a tragedy for all those it affects and is one of the most visible signs of the nation’s housing crisis. Councils are providing temporary housing for over 82,000 households, including over 123,000 children.
- Our latest analysis demonstrates that homelessness support (including temporary accommodation) faces a funding gap of £110 million in 2019/20, and £421 million in 2024/25.
- Rough sleeping is the most visible sign of the rise in homelessness. We welcome the Government’s rough sleeping strategy, and share the ambition to end rough sleeping by 2027.iii The strategy includes some encouraging proposals, but lacks substantive measures to ensure that fewer people reach the point of crisis.
- Councils want to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. This means allowing councils to build more social homes for people on low incomes. To achieve this, the Government should allow councils to retain 100 per cent of the proceeds from Right to Buy sales.
- The Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is paid to low-income families in the private rented sector to help with high housing costs. To prevent homelessness, the LHA freeze should be lifted, and the Government should work with landlords to provide more genuinely affordable housing.
- Councils face an overall funding gap of £3.1 billion in 2019/20, which we estimate will rise to £8 billion by 2024/25. It is vital that the Government uses the 2019 Spending Review to deliver truly sustainable funding for local government.