Over 100,000 families to be trapped in temporary accommodation by 2020 if the present trend of homelessness continues, according to a report published on April 11, 2018.
According to a research commissioned by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), increasing housing costs and insecure work that pushes people into poverty is expected to increase the number of people confined to temporary housing by 2020. The annual Homelessness Monitor shows that 70 per cent of local authorities in England are finding it difficult to get houses for homeless people belonging to their area. Moreover, 89 percent of the people are even facing difficulty in finding rented private accommodation.
Therefore, homeless people had to be placed in emergency housing such as B&Bs and hostels by many councils. This led to an increasing requirement of building affordable and permanent homes for the homeless people. According to the statistics mentioned by the government, in the last three months of the year, around 79,000 families were staying in temporary accommodation, as they did not have a permanent home. The number of people staying in temporary houses have increased from 69,140 in the last quarter of 2015, to 75,740 in the same period in 2016 and 78,930 at the end of last year.
Crisis and JRF says that more social housing built by the government and ensuring homeless people’s access to the houses can be a solution to the problem. The government’s recent actions on homelessness including its pledge to end rough sleeping by 2027 and the establishment of the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Implementation Taskforce was welcomed by the charity. The government can find an opportunity in the upcoming green paper on social housing to commit on building of affordable homes for the homeless people.
