Temporary Accommodation — House of Commons, 2017-11-07
Topic: Housing
Helen Elizabeth Hayes (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing this important debate and her powerful and moving speech. It is pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) My constituency covers part of the London borough of Lambeth and part of the London borough of Southwark. Both councils have among the most ambitious council house building programmes in the country. They are doing everything possible to deliver new, genuinely affordable homes, to prevent households from becoming homeless, and to source temporary accommodation within or very close to the borough, paying as much regard as possible to people’s support networks and where children go to school. However, they face an impossible task with the current policy and funding environment In 2015-16, Southwark Council placed about 3,400 households in temporary accommodation. In Lambeth there are currently about 1,500 households, including 5,000 children, in temporary accommodation. Southwark’s spend on temporary accommodation has gone up fivefold since 2011-12. Temporary accommodation is funded from a council’s general fund, and the increase in expenditure has come at exactly the same time as the Government have cut more than 50% of the direct support grant of both councils Across the country, more than 78,000 households, including 120,000 children, are living in temporary accommodation. The figure is up a shocking 60% since 2011 and continues to rise at 7% a year. Each one of those households is placed at greater risk of physical and mental ill health, and children in particular are more likely than their peers to have respiratory problems Across the country, expenditure is going up, and about £845 million was spent on temporary accommodation nationally in 2015-16. This increase in expenditure, both locally in the boroughs that cover my constituency and across the country, is not money well spent to deliver better outcomes, but money spent in a situation of last resort, delivering distress and instability for the households concerned Responsibility for that growth rests squarely at the door of the Government. According to the National Audit Office, Government policy is directly driving the increase in homelessness. It was the Government who imposed an arbitrary cap on the local housing allowance, which has caused an exponential increase in the number of people becoming homeless because they are unable to afford the cost of a rent increase that the LHA rate falls behind. The impact of the LHA cap could not be more stark than in Southwark, where the capped rate is just 38% of the average private sector rent. Average rent in the borough for a two-bedroom home is £694 a week, but the LHA is capped at £265. Soon, residents who are reliant on the LHA will be able to afford no private sector accommodation at all. The situation forces hundreds of households who would not previously have needed help with their housing to seek support from the council, because they find themselves facing homelessness. Temporary accommodation, much of which is both more expensive and of a much lower quality than general needs housing in the private rented sector, is often where such households are placed It is the Government who are refusing to listen to the overwhelming evidence that the six-week delay in receiving a universal credit payment is directly contributing to an increase in homelessness in the areas where that has been piloted, including Southwark. It will certainly continue to do so as it is rolled out, unless the Government decide to take notice of the evidence and pause the roll-out so that the problems can be addressed. It is the Government who have presided over a 95% drop in the number of social homes to rent funded by central Government grant since 2010 I was proud to have supported the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which emerged from the Communities and Local Government Committee’s inquiry on homelessness. The Act, which places an emphasis on providing support for people facing homelessness to prevent them from becoming homeless, comes into force next year. However, preventing homelessness is labour-intensive work and there are grave concerns that the funding that the Government have committed to the Act’s implementation will not come close to fully resourcing councils for its implementation. The Act was largely based on legislation already in place in Wales, but the scale of the challenge in England is completely different. Southwark, for example, made more homelessness application decisions last year than were made in the whole of Wales over the same period. The Act must be properly resourced if it is to be effective. If it is not, the Government will have missed an enormous opportunity to take meaningful action to prevent homelessness I want to say a word about the personal consequences of living in temporary accommodation for my constituents. Every week in my surgeries, I see families who are at their wits’ end, living in accommodation that is overcrowded, damp and sometimes shared with strangers. Their experiences are among the most harrowing and distressing I hear. I think of my constituent who lives in a single room with her two-year-old daughter, sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities with other residents she does not know, some of whom cause disturbance and smoke cannabis on the landing outside her room. I think of the woman who, while she was pregnant, was placed in a studio flat with no running water, where she remained after the birth of her child, with the only alternatives available at the time for a mother and new-born baby being a mixed-sex hostel, or accommodation a long way from her family and support network. I also think of the couple who live with their three children, two of whom have sickle cell disease, in accommodation that is damp, cold and mouldy—conditions that precipitate frequent sickle cell crises and make it impossible to manage this painful condition effectively The conditions in which these constituents are forced to live are distressing enough, but these people also suffer the profound psychological consequences of living in insecurity without a permanent home, being unable to put down roots, and often travelling a long way to maintain employment and supportive relationships, particularly with their children’s school. The Government are perpetuating the problem, most notably by the LHA cap and universal credit. The public sector funds that are being spent on poor temporary accommodation could be used instead to sustain private tenancies and prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. This would deliver much better outcomes In his Budget statement, the Chancellor has an opportunity, a month before Christmas, to stem the increase in the number of families living in temporary accommodation and to take meaningful action to address homelessness. The Government must lift the cap on LHA, because doing so would have an instant impact on the ability of hundreds of households to sustain their private sector tenancy. They must commit to the full implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act, with funding at the level that councils require. They must also make funding available to councils and housing associations to address the supply shortfall in the short term The increase in the number of families living in temporary accommodation is to the Government’s shame. They must take meaningful action to reduce the distress and damage that their failed housing policies are causing.