GMLC campaign volunteer Jake Marshall summarises the findings of an October 2022 Smith Institute report on homelessness and temporary accommodation, giving particular attention to Greater Manchester.
Written at a time when the current government is eyeing £50 billion in further public spending cuts, this article echoes many organisations’ calls for increased government funding to the housing sector. Investment is direly needed to increase the availability of suitable and affordable short and long-term social housing, and to prevent evictions in a climate of rising rents and living costs, compounded by falling state benefits.
According to the new report by the Smith Institute, the City of Manchester in 2021-2 had almost triple the average concentration of households assessed as homeless in England, over double that of London, with Salford not far behind. The City of Manchester also has over triple the average concentration of people in temporary accommodation in England, with Salford also above the national average.
To combat this in Greater Manchester (‘GM’), the report highlights how local government has launched initiatives to push collaboration between state bodies, charities and social impact investors and to channel limited resources. However, there is a risk that all efforts to reduce homelessness are firefighting unless the layout of the wider housing sector is changed significantly. Local initiatives and aspirations without proper government funding have proven insufficient to prevent us reaching crisis point. And, in the current climate, it is set to get even worse.
Now we will turn to the evidence provided by the Smith Institute’s report on homeless temporary accommodation in Greater Manchester and London. Figures relate to Greater Manchester unless otherwise stated.
Thousands stuck in unsecure, inadequate temporary accommodation
Numbers of households in temporary accommodation (TA) have risen by 879% since 2010, and 534% since 2015, up to 4,574 in the first quarter of 2022. Half of those households include children.
Of those in TA in July-September 2021, 15% were living in B&Bs, with over 10% living in hostels. 50% of the accommodation is in the private sector, where landlords are said to “play the system”, “making a killing” by charging at nightly rates.
The damaging effect on the people anticipating upheaval at any time is difficult to understate. As one Housing Officer in GM put it:
“Being in TA diminishes everything: it diminishes your health, your access to mainstream society, to opportunities and there is lots of stress and pressure because of the lack of insecurity, space and privacy. You’re often in poor quality accommodation as well.”
Other effects reported include inability to commit to work, decreasing mental and physical health, isolation, anxiety for children moving schools and the higher likelihood of death.
The average waiting time in TA in early 2022 was 1.2 years due to a lack of suitable long-term accommodation. When families in the City of Manchester are finally placed in settled accommodation, 3 in 10 are being placed in another GM borough. This is despite the 10,000-12,000 empty homes in GM which landlords are not sufficiently incentivised to bring up to standard.
Demand is only increasing. The key immediate factors leading to homelessness – overcrowding in multi-generational family homes, evictions and people fleeing domestic abuse – are on the rise.
Rising rents and falling benefits
Rents in GM rose 23.4% from 2021 to 2022 (second quarter). This trend is unlikely to cease, with inflation rising sharply since then and mortgage rates leaving many landlords keen to raise their rents. The TA market is particularly vulnerable to rent rises. With the TA market saturated for the reasons above, private landlords can demand higher prices from councils who have “little option but to pay more”. As one GM Housing Officer put it:
“Turnover in the [private rental sector] market is down a third. It’s a seller’s market at the moment and landlords are making hay.”
At the same time, benefits are at their lowest real value for 40 years.
The government sets location-specific caps on housing benefit, which are becoming increasingly detached from the reality of rental values. The Smith Institute reports that “in most of…the City of Manchester very few private rented TA or move-on properties are now affordable to households on benefits”. The Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) budget, designed to cover such rent shortfalls, has recently been cut to its lowest level since 2013, leaving many people falling into rent arrears.
On top of that, many families are being hit by the ‘benefit cap’, which operates to reduce benefits below the amounts calculated to meet what the government (ungenerously) deems would meet basic needs. Often, people’s benefits are capped because the government considers them to have more children than benefits should support, despite the detrimental effects this will have on those children by plunging them into a cycle of poverty.
As more can’t afford their rents and more are evicted, more have to look to their local council for support.
Councils are left to foot the bill while their funding is cut
Councils have legal duties to prevent homelessness, otherwise made inevitable by the above. The main ways of achieving this are through funding TA and social housing, or subsidising the private rental market to prevent people falling into rent arrears (such as through DHPs and housing benefit).
The counterproductivity of inadequate national benefit provision is clear – a study by Warwick University in 2021 showed that for every pound the government ‘saved’ in housing benefit, councils spent 53p on TA costs. In other words, councils are effectively “propping up the housing benefit system”.
Nevertheless, national government has reduced council spending per person in services by 25% since 2010. Manchester City Council cut £3.2m from its homelessness directorate in 2021/22, roughly at the same time as the GM Action Plan was announced. Council tax rose in every Manchester borough for 2022-23.
The report praises a range of local initiatives, including the GM Homelessness Prevention Action Plan, the A Bed Every Night scheme to reduce rough sleeping, and selective licensing schemes to enforce better housing conditions. However, some initiatives were considered “short term, disjointed and piecemeal” – and even those which have achieved a lot have not been able to remedy the wider housing sector’s systemic failings.
Even where local intentions are good, they are insufficient without government funding.
What you can do to help
Greater Manchester Law Centre offers housing law advice and representation, particularly in relation to evictions and homelessness. We answer enquiries and do casework for hundreds of GM residents a year. We also campaign around housing issues. Most recently, we have raised the issue of deaths in temporary accommodation and produced materials about inquests for bereaved families; we have campaigned for social housing providers to become subject to Freedom of Information requests; and we have begun research investigating landlords’ use of Section 21 evictions to generate data that can help shape upcoming private rented sector reforms. We also work with tenants’ unions and other housing organisations to share legal knowledge and guidance, train activists to support their communities, and set up referral relationships to ensure people can access urgent advice where needed.
You can support the work of GMLC in many ways:
Tell us your story
If you are a former client of GMLC or a member of the public, and you have experienced homeless Temporary Accommodation, we would like to talk to you about your experiences. These may be shared as case studies for us to highlight good practice, or to argue for improvements to homeless TA and the housing system. Get in touch with katebradley@gmlaw.org.uk if you’d like to share your story.
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We currently receive donations from many affiliate trade union branches and organisations across Greater Manchester and the North West. We also offer training and support to these organisations across benefits, housing and employment law. You can see details of how to affiliate here.
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