Shelter says Chancellor sticking his head in the sand over homelessness crisis
Posted 15 Mar 2023
Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Shelter, said: “The Chancellor could have put an end to spiralling homelessness, but instead he’s stuck his head in the sand.
“Homelessness has almost doubled in the last 10 years and yet again we have a Budget that does nothing to help struggling renters who are drowning in debt and rapidly rising rents. It is outrageous that the government has chosen to keep housing benefit frozen at 2020 levels when its own figures show rents have risen by more than 8% in this time.
“A massive growth in homelessness is surely not the type of growth the government wants, so why is it ignoring this crisis? Sleeping rough or being shunted from hostel-to-hostel ruins people’s lives and costs the economy more. This is the government’s final warning to introduce emergency measures to keep people in their homes – it must urgently unfreeze housing benefit.”
Supporting stats from Shelter:
One in three private renters (1.8 million) in England rely on housing benefit to help pay their rent.
The number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen by an alarming 87% in the last 10 years - from just over 50,000 to nearly 100,000.
More than two in five (44%) of private renting adults in England – equivalent to 3.6 million people – say rising living costs are making them more worried about becoming homeless (CoL tracker data – 2023)
Rents have risen by 8.4% in England since LHA last matched rent costs in 2020.
ENDS
Notes to editors:
The number of private renters claiming legacy housing benefit and the housing element of Universal Credit are from DWP, Statexplore. The proportion of private renters claiming housing benefit is an estimate derived from combining administrative data from the DWP with population estimates published by DLUHC (the English Housing Survey), and by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). We have adjusted the total number of private rented households in England and each region to account for the number of adults living in households (such as multiple single adults or multiple families sharing a home) where more than one welfare claim could be made. This number is calculated using English Housing Survey data.
The number of adults saying that rising living costs are making them more worried about becoming homeless is from a YouGov survey for Shelter of 2,002 private renters in England. The survey was carried out online between the 13th – 30th January. Data has been weighted to be representative of private renters in England. Population figures have been calculated by Shelter using English Housing Survey data.
The number of households living in temporary accommodation is published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. In Q3 2012 52,960 households lived in temporary accommodation, in Q3 2022, 99,270 households lived in temporary accommodation – a rise of 87%. This data is available in table TA1 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness
Rental inflation data is from the Office for National Statistics Index of Private Housing Rental Prices, UK: monthly estimates These are available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/indexofprivatehousingrentalpricesreferencetables When LHA was last reset in April 2020 it was based on rental amounts in the twelve months to September 2019. Rents have risen by 8.4% in England since September 2019. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/indexofprivatehousingrentalpricesreferencetables
About Shelter: Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home and fight the devastating impact the housing emergency has on people and society. Shelter believes that home is everything. Learn more at www.shelter.org.uk