Homelessness and rough sleeping rise sharply in England

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The cost of living crisis and housing shortage have left more than 300,000 people homeless in England, with almost half of them children, according to new research.

Housing advocacy group Shelter said the number of people who would spend Christmas without a home jumped by 14 per cent year on year to 309,000, or one in 18 people, including 140,000 children.

A record 279,400 of those were stuck in temporary accommodation, according to the charity’s annual survey, which also reported a 26 per cent jump in sleepers. More than 3,000 people in England can be found without a roof over their heads on any given night.

Deborah Garvey, policy manager at Shelter, said this would be one of the most severe winters on record for homelessness, caused by a combination of skyrocketing rents, chronic under-investment in social housing and long-term net losses in social-rent homes.

This has put additional stress on cash-strapped local councils who have been forced to find temporary accommodation to house tens of thousands of people because of the log jam in the social rent sector.

While Shelter and other homelessness charities welcomed a recent government decision to raise the cap on local housing allowance to cover the bottom third of the private rental market for people on benefits, Garvey said this was too late for many families.

“The unfreezing doesn’t happen till April so that is very cold comfort for people who are already homeless over this winter,” she said, predicting that the overall number of people without homes would continue to spike in coming months.

Matt Downie, chief executive of homelessness charity Crisis, blamed the government’s “failure to tackle the drivers of homelessness” for the surge in the numbers.

A growing number of refugees being evicted from Home Office accommodation has contributed to the crisis, according to charities and local authorities.

This is largely the result of a recent reduction in the notice period that successful asylum claimants get before Home Office support ends from 56 days — the time it takes to access universal credit — to as little as a week.

The accelerated processing of asylum claims this year — in a bid to meet Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clear a legacy backlog — has further contributed to the problem countrywide.

London Councils, the cross-party association of local authorities in the capital, said its members registered 846 refugees and asylum seekers as homeless in October, up 39 per cent on the month.

Grace Williams, London Councils’ executive member for communities, said the situation would “only get more dangerous as winter sets in”.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said it was spending £2bn to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, including making half of that available so councils could give financial support for people to move out of temporary accommodation.

“Temporary accommodation is an important way of making sure no family is without a roof over their head, but councils must ensure it is temporary and suitable for families, who have a right to appeal if it doesn’t meet their household’s needs,” it added.

Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “Year after year, ministers have failed to get a grip of this crisis, neglecting the social rented sector and dodging responsibility over rental reform. This Christmas is, sadly, no different.”