Southwark Council will set aside an extra £4 million on temporary accommodation amid growing housing pressure in the borough.
The council has about 3,500 families in temporary accommodation, waiting for a permanent home. Many are in this kind of accommodation for three or four years, according to Southwark’s temporary accommodation action plan, published last September.
Local authorities have responsibilities to house eligible people who have been https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/rats-cockroaches-mice-and-mould-young-mother-living-in-peckham-temporary-accommodation-hell/homeless for up to eight weeks. These people can then stay in temporary accommodation until they are found a council home. But “supply is being outstripped by demand in this respect”, according to the council’s report, driving up the number of people in temporary accommodation.
This is because of “a national housing crisis, a rental market that is largely unaffordable due to central government welfare reforms and a continued fall in social housing annual lettings due to the Right to Buy outstripping our own ambitious 11,000 new homes project.”
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These pressures are likely to increase with the increase in the cost of living, inflation and the cut to Universal Credit last year. Southwark probably overspent on temporary accommodation by more than £8 million in 2021.
Temporary accommodation can be unpleasant, despite council’s ‘good homes standard’, brought in last March. The News recently reported on the case of a woman living in temporary accommodation with her young son, and rats, mice and cockroaches.
The extra £4m is part of the budget to be voted on at the council assembly on Wednesday (February 23).