The number of households living in temporary accommodation in England has hit its highest level since at least 1998, according to official data.
Close to 105,000 households were living in temporary accommodation — such as a hostel or a room in a shared house — in the first quarter of 2023, up 10% from the same period last year, and the highest number since the government started keeping records 25 years ago, the UK housing department said Tuesday.
Local authorities in England have a duty to provide accommodation for households that have become "unintentionally homeless." While authorities process a household's application for housing, they often provide temporary accommodation.
"The majority of households in temporary accommodation have been placed under the main homelessness duty," the housing department says in its definition of temporary accommodation.
The number of households classed as homeless and who needed accommodation as a priority — for example, families with children — rose 20% in the first three months of the year compared with the same period in 2022, the data also showed.
In addition, there were almost 38,000 households at risk of becoming homeless, broadly unchanged from the first quarter of 2022. Common reasons included landlords wanting to sell or re-let their property, and tenants falling behind on rent payments due to a change in personal circumstances.
The United Kingdom has been plagued by a chronic shortage of housing for many years. Average house prices hit a record high of £292,555 ($378,015) in September 2022, coming down only slightly since as mortgage rates shot up. Rents have also been rising as demand surges because many more people can't afford to buy.
Households across the UK have been struggling to keep up with soaring rents and mortgages, on top of painful increases in the cost of food and energy over the past year. Consumer price inflation in the UK stood at 7.9% in June — that is down slightly from 8.7% in May but still the highest level in the Group of Seven, which includes most of the world's biggest economies.
According to Crisis, a homeless charity, the National Housing Federation, an association of organizations providing affordable housing, and researchers at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University, around 380,000 homes need to be built in England, Scotland and Wales every year in order to meet demand. Across the UK, only 192,000 homes were built last year, according to the National House Building Council.
The UK government said Monday that it was on track to hit a target of 1 million new homes over five years by January 2025, when the next general election is due to be held. The figure refers to homes in England, the department told CNN Wednesday.
"Once again, we see the crippling cost that years of no investment in housing benefit, and a shameful lack of social house building, is having by trapping families in temporary accommodation," Matt Downie, chief executive at Crisis, said in a statement Tuesday.
"Not only do people not have the stability and security of a home, but they're often left to cope in just one room, with no facilities to cook meals or do washing."
