According to an analysis by Homeless Link, the umbrella body for more than 500 charities, the number of households accepted as homeless by councils in England has increased by 13% to 35,680 in the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period in 2010.

The coalition is not only presiding over a dramatic rise in the number of homeless people but is also overseeing a rise in the use of B&Bs to house them.

Up to September, the country saw numbers of people placed in such accommodation rising by 30% to 9,240 compared with the same period last year.

Charities say the poor economic climate and the slow whittling away of benefits is contributing to homelessness – especially at a time when rents are rising.

Jacqui McCluskey, director of policy for Homeless Link, said:

"As a result of the recession, cuts and the high cost of living, the number of homeless people continues to rise.

"Especially alarming is the jump in number of people becoming homeless because they have had to leave their privately rented homes.

"We are concerned that this trend will accelerate as the government's changes to housing benefit bite." ...

Gdn  09 Dec 2011

Homelessness

Landlords from Hell

The woman who lives in a shed: how London landlords are cashing in

Converted sheds have become an increasingly mainstream – if illegal – part of the London property market.

It's a logical development, given the explosion of property prices throughout the capital, and the huge shortage of supply.

As central London becomes more expensive, people are pushed further out and rental prices even in Newham, which is the second most deprived borough in England and Wales, are rising fast.

Landlords are subdividing family homes into smaller and smaller units, haphazardly extending plumbing and electricity connections from the main properties into the garden sheds and garages, which they have no problem in renting out ...

Gdn  09 May 2012

Tory borough plans to move homeless away from London

Andrew Johnson, Tory speak-your-weight machine and cliché spouter, would have been at home as Goebbels second i/c propaganda.

Andrew Johnson, Hammersmith & Fulham council's cabinet member for housing, said:

"Our priority is to reward hard-working families. We will continue to house elderly people and others who are vulnerable.

"We want to give people a hand up and not a handout. We want to incentivise residents to make the most of their lives.

"Council housing can be a great safety net to help get people back on their feet, but it should be a springboard, not a destination."

"By proposing fixed-term tenancies for new tenants, we intend to remove the notion that a council house is always for life.

"The current system does not promote personal aspiration or provide tenants with any incentive to try to move into home ownership and does not make the best use of the housing we have."

Gdn  02 May 2012

Housing Benefit reform ... segregation of low income households ...

London council accused of 'social cleansing' as it asks housing benefit families to move north

A ponzi housing market meets a shrinking economy meets an expanding population, meets a government run by wet-round-the-ears 'posh boys' from Eton who have no clue as to what's taking place.

Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales has revealed the council wrote to more than 1,100 organisations to try to move 500 families claiming housing benefit to other parts of the country in a move.

The problem was revealed by a housing association in Stoke-on-Trent, which wrote to the Local Government Association, after it was approached by Newham Council.

Asked if there was an alternative option to uprooting families, [Sir Robin, Mayor of Newham] said:

"No, we've looked at it and we've done the best we can.

"The result of Government benefit cuts means that many more people from wealthy parts of London are looking for places to live." ...

Tel  24 Apr 2012

Squeezed out: London landlords evict tenants hit by housing benefit cap

The Games Hurt Londoners

NHS 'must do more to respond to rising numbers of homeless'

About 70% of people who use homelessness services have mental health problems, and many self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.

"For a range of NHS-funded services, we are not treating homeless patients for mental health who are intoxicated. People are not accepted because they use drink or drugs. Clearly they do need to be referred for therapy, so it's not good enough to say, 'Go away and clean yourself up,'," said the confederation's mental health network director, Steve Shrubb.

Shrubb said there was concern in the NHS that homeless numbers were increasing at a time when the health regulator Monitor warned of cuts of 7% a year for three years.

He said the government's own estimate that 2,200 people were sleeping rough on any one night in England – a jump of 23% on the previous year – was too low.

"We probably have that in London alone," he said.

Shrubb pointed out that a study by the University of York revealed that 23,000 people were already in emergency accommodation, slipping in and out of homelessness.

"A lot of our members tell us that this is the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of particularly young people moving from couch to couch, staying on friends' floors. It only takes a small crisis for them to be on the streets. We need to get an idea of how big this problem is." ...

Gdn  18 Apr 2012

Homelessness

Homelessness jumps by 14% in a year

Across England, 48,510 households were accepted as homeless by local authorities in 2011, according to figures published by the Department for Communities and Local Government on Thursday.

The data shows 69,460 children or expected children are in homeless households, with three-quarters of the households accepted containing children.

... housing minister, Grant Shapps, said the figures were still half the average rate seen under Labour and blamed "the debt-laden economy we inherited [which] is leaving a legacy of hard-up households across the country" ...

Gdn  08 Mar 2012

Private tenancy evictions up by 17%

Analysis of possession order claims by legal information specialist Sweet & Maxwell shows that 14,895 were launched in county courts by private landlords in 2011 compared to 12,686 in 2008.

A possession order legally entitles a landlord to evict a tenant and regain possession of a property.

The firm says unemployment and rising rents are likely to have caused the increase in tenant evictions.

Rents have risen by 8% since 2009, reaching a record high at the end of 2011, according to the LSL rental index ...

Gdn  02 Mar 2012

James Dyson calls for looser employment laws and shorter leases

Hard times bring rise in crowded houses

The number of multi-genereation households has topped half a million ... levels last seen in the 1870s according to ... Miriam Silverman (of) Ancestry.co.uk ...

i  24 Feb 2012

Number of rough sleepers in England rises by a fifth

Charities warned that the latest official figures were "just the tip of the iceberg" and that rough sleeping was likely to become more prevalent as widespread local authority cuts to housing support services and housing benefits took effect.

The statistics, released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, show increases in the number of rough sleepers in eight out of nine English regions. Overall, 2,181 people were recorded as sleeping rough on any one night in England in autumn 2011 – up from 1,768 the year before.

The data shows rough sleeping is most concentrated in London, the south-east and south-west – although the biggest year-on-year increases came in the east Midlands (55%), and the north-west (40%).

Only the north-east saw a fall in rough sleeping, down by a third over the past 12 months ...

A Homeless Link survey due to be published next month will show that more than half of all homelessness services have been hit by budget cuts, leading to closures of hostels and bed spaces ...

Gdn  23 Feb 2012

Rough Sleeping England - Autumn 2011

Homelessness

Rough Sleepers

Shelter

London's homeless could be forced to move as far as Hull

Forced Evacuations: Very Third Reich!

At least one London council, Croydon, is seeking to rent private accommodation in Hull and several other Yorkshire towns.

It has also rented property in St Leonards on Sea on the Sussex coast ...

Shelter, the housing charity, said new regulations, to be published soon, would set out councils' obligations to homeless people placed in private rented accommodation. Shelter expressed concerns that the regulations would allow councils to house homeless people outside their boroughs.

It said Croydon council was considering moving some people in temporary accommodation to Hull, 230 miles away.

"The fact that councils may be considering making use of these powers to offer people homes away from their local areas – potentially having to uproot families from schools, communities and jobs – is testament to the scale of our housing crisis," Campbell Robb, the chief executive of Shelter, said ...

Gdn  18 Feb 2012

Housing and the Localism Act 2011

Localism Act 2011

Councils fail to spend £1m earmarked for ... homelessness

Figures show that nearly £1m of the £20m set aside to help families who could not afford rent or other housing costs in 2010-11 was left untouched by councils.

Six local authorities spent less than half the money they were allocated for these "discretionary housing payments" by the Department for Work and Pensions.

They include Wirral council, which spent just £114,380 (47%) of the £245,200 the government had earmarked for the borough.

In total, £990,272 remained unclaimed in England, Scotland and Wales.

Yet some councils made the decision to top up the money they received from the DWP from their own coffers, taking the total awarded to £21.4m ...

Gdn  01 Feb 2012

Nurses face eviction from staff housing

According to the Royal College of Nursing ... nurses are often facing serious financial hardship as they struggle to meet their housing costs.

"We have been taking up an increasing number of cases of debt and financial problems as a direct result of housing taking up such a large part of nurses' salaries," says Claire Cannings, senior welfare adviser at the RCN.

"Increasingly, we are seeing nurses spending over 50% of their salary just on accommodation, especially in London and the south-east." ...

Research by the housing charity Shelter has shown that private rents are already unaffordable to those on average incomes in 55% of local authority areas.

Closing down more NHS accommodation will add to the pressure, claims Shelter's head of policy, Toby Lloyd.

"Pushing more people into the [private] sector can only increase competition for homes and drive up rents further, especially in high-value areas like inner London," he says.

"If we want people to work night shifts for modest wages in London's hospitals they have to be able to live nearby in homes that are affordable for them.

"Selling off NHS homes might raise money in the short term but it will ultimately increase the pressure on NHS wages, or lead to staff shortages." ...

Gdn  31 Jan 2012

Housing benefit cuts will put 800,000 homes out of reach

The effect will be felt not just in south-east England.

Before today, Birmingham had more than 37,000 homes with rents affordable on welfare.

Now 34,500 housing benefit claimants will be chasing 23,000 low-cost houses, according to the analysis, carried out for the Guardian.

On the Mersey, 21,000 people collecting local housing allowance will only be able to afford 12,000 homes in Liverpool.

Because welfare is set at Westminster, the cuts will also be felt in Scotland.

In Glasgow there will be a thousand more benefit recipients than there are properties which can be rented with the government's reduced housing subsidy ...

Gdn  01 Jan 2012

Eight radical solutions to the housing crisis

70,000 children living in temporary accommodation

According to government figures highlighted by the charity, there are 69,846 children in England living in temporary accommodation such as hostels, bed and breakfasts and refuges.

Many of them will be forced to move repeatedly with their families over the coming months and, in some cases, may have to wait years before they find a permanent place to live.

The figures reveal that 35,680 households have been accepted as homeless by local authorities since the beginning of 2011 ...

Gdn  29 Dec 2011

Barnabus

Crisis

Housing

Shelter

Where's the peace and goodwill for those on housing benefit?

The housing benefit cap makes little sense in economic terms.

It doesn't take much imagination to see the rising costs of every kind that increasing social isolation, dislocation and breakdown are likely to lead to.

Instead, the thinking appears to follow much more from the Westminster model of trying to restrict residence to well-heeled "people like us" ...

Gdn  21 Dec 2011

Homeless die 30 years before the average person

Number of empty houses rises by 12,000

Council cuts: the Manhattanisation of central London

Housing benefit caps force families out of town

'Something for nothing'

Dame Shirley Porter

Homeless die 30 years before the average person

Tory Social Darwinism in action, saving on benefits.

The research, carried out by Sheffield University on behalf of homelessness charity Crisis, found that drug and alcohol abuse counts for just over a third of all deaths among homeless people.

Suicide is also nine times more likely among people living rough than the general population.

Meanwhile it found that deaths as a result of traffic accidents are three times as likely, infections twice as likely and falls are more than three times as likely to result in death ...

Ind  21 Dec 2011

Tackling homelessness requires a more psychological focus

Families face fast-track eviction to help landlords cash in on higher rents

Inner-city landlords are exploiting the country's acute housing shortage by evicting tenants and replacing them with those prepared to pay more.

The rent increases come as cuts to local housing allowance (LHA) are phased in from next month, amid warnings that a combination of rising rents and reduced allowances will see poorer families priced out.

New figures reveal a 22% increase in the number of fast-track evictions – known as "accelerated possessions" – between 2010 and 2011.

It is thought the rise is largely down to landlords taking advantage of being able to re-let their properties at a higher rent ...

According to the annual Survey of English Housing, there has been a 77% increase in the number of families living in the private rented sector in the past two years.

In 2008, 574,883 families with children were in the private rented sector. Last year the figure had ballooned to 1,017,210 families ...

Gdn  18 Dec 2011

Thousands of households 'in danger of eviction'

Housing

Slum UK: housing crisis that shames the nation

Housing conditions in Britain are among the worst in Western Europe and cost the nation about £7bn a year by adding to the pressure on the NHS and other public services, according to a major study to be published today ...

It warns that homelessness is on the rise and predicts the return of unscrupulous landlords like the infamous Peter Rachman, who exploited his London tenants in the 1950s and 1960s.

Almost 4,000 people are sleeping rough on London's streets, an increase of 8 per cent since last year.

About half of these are from the UK and the rest from a wide variety of other countries, notably Poland ...

The Pro-Housing Alliance ... blueprint recommends the housing crisis should be tackled by the provision of 500,000 green and affordable houses and flats a year for the next seven years, including bringing empty homes back into use ...

The number of families on waiting lists in London doubled to 362,000 between 1997 and 2010 – and now accounts for more than 20 per cent of the national waiting list. Yet more than 6,000 council homes are empty in London, nearly a third because they need repairs, with more than 2,300 going without tenants for more than a year.

Ind  08 Sept 2011

Families 'will be priced out of social housing by plans for higher rents'

The investigations, by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, suggests a couple with three or more children would breach the maximum £26,000 benefit cap in four out of the five local authority areas it examined.

The four authorities were: Brighton and Hove, East Sussex; Bromley, Greater London; Hertsmere, Hertfordshire; and Mid Sussex, all areas that are home to large numbers of families in affordable housing.

A couple with three children in Hertsmere would face a shortfall of £56 a week if 80% market rents were charged, while in Brighton and Hove the shortfall would be £34.

The only place in the study where 80% rents could be sustained by a larger family dependent on benefits, without incurring additional hardship, was Plymouth ...

Obs  21 Aug 2011

Housing Benefit

Charity cuts: the 'avoidable destruction' of homelessness services

Another roar of pain and anger from the homelessness charity sector ...

... Andrew Redfern, the chief executive of Framework, a Nottinghamshire-based charity ... explains how far services for homeless and vulnerable people have come in the past decade, not least as a result of investment through the Supporting People programme, and how quickly those services will fall apart, now that funding stream has been savaged ...

Chrissy81
15 July 2011 8:06PM

Framework helped me when I was homeless. Their support after they helped me get housed also means I will never become homeless again.

I now work for Framework and it is very clear all the work we do is not just about helping homeless people - it is saving the country money!

We really are keeping people out of prison and out of hospital. We do this by reducing substance misuse, mental health problems, anti-social behaviour etc.

Also, the support is all about trying to ensure that people sustain tenancies, get in to work and hopefully don't need to access support services in future.

I am an example of this.

Framework have drastically changed homelessness in Nottinghamshire over last ten years and these cuts are seriously jeopardising all their good work.

The cuts will only make short-term savings. In the longer term the cost to our country both financially and socially will be devestating.

Gdn  15 July 2011

Framework

Homelessness cuts: what exactly are ministers there for?

Homelessness: charities face 30% funding cuts

First in the cuts firing line: the homeless and socially excluded

Homelessness builds into a social crisis for coalition

The number of people in England presenting to their local council as homeless rose by 23% in the first three months of this year, compared with the same period in 2010. The numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets has also started to climb.

That 23% figure does not tell the full story: some councils in London – Hackney, Bromley, Islington, Haringey — saw year on year rises in homeless applications of between 80% and 99%.

These statistics, troubling in themselves, are only the first wave. They refer to people, by and large, uprooted by the reverberations of the financial crash of 2008 and the resultant economic downturn.

They do not yet show the impact of public spending cuts which came in on 1 April or housing benefit changes, which will start to be felt from January 2012.

When these filter through, the homelessness graph is likely rise dramatically ...

Councils fear the housing benefit cash "savings" to Iain Duncan Smith's Department for Work and Pensions budget is merely "cost shunting" on a grand scale ...

Gdn  03 July 2011

Savage cuts will leave people sleeping rough on the streets

Housing Benefit

Homelessness on the rise as recession and cuts bite

BTW, Mr Shapps, your government has cut the funding for CABs [ME]

Homelessness is rising dramatically for the first time in years in the UK as the effects of the recession are felt ...

The government data show that 26,400 people approached a local council for housing help in the first three months of 2011, a rise of 23% compared with the same period last year.

Less than half of these applications were successful ...

Some of the biggest rises in homelessness applications came in London boroughs: substantial rises were recorded in Bromley (99%), Hammersmith and Fulham (92%), Islington (88%), and Haringey (83%), in the first three months of 2011.

The figures also revealed an increase in homeless families being housed in bed and breakfast accommodation ...

The housing minister, Grant Shapps, admitted the figures underline "how the recession has brought difficult times for lots of people".

But he said homelessness remained a government priority and urged people at risk of losing their homes to contact a Citizens Advice bureau ...

Gdn  10 June 2011

Statutory Homelessness: March Quarter 2011 England

Thousands of London council homes left empty

More than 6,000 council homes have been left unoccupied in London, figures from the 33 local authorities have shown ...

BBC NEWS  15 May 2011