Tag Archives: temporary accommodation

Europe’s housing time bomb: a new report highlights the millions affected by housing exclusion

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The European Union has not had its troubles to seek in the years following the financial meltdown of 2008. Continuing concerns about the euro, the refugee crisis and Brexit are challenging Europe’s leaders as never before, leading to speculation about the very existence of the EU. But at the end of March, new research highlighted an additional challenge that threatens Europe’s social fabric.

The authors of the report described the current situation concerning housing exclusion and homelessness as “a state of emergency” affecting all European countries. Startling figures uncovered by the research show a continent-wide crisis in the making:

  • In France, the number of homeless people increased by 50% between 2001 and 2012
  • In Germany, 16% of people spend more than 40% of their income on housing
  • In Romania, one in every two people live in overcrowded conditions
  • In the league table of homelessness, the UK now ranks 20th out of 28
  • The number of families in temporary accommodation in London has increased by 50% since 2010
  • In Copenhagen, youth homelessness has increased by 75% since 2009
  • In Warsaw, the number of people sleeping rough or in emergency shelters has risen by 37% since 2013
  • One in 70 people in Athens are now homeless

Vulnerable groups

The report finds that young people across Europe are being hit especially hard by housing exclusion.

“In all EU countries, young people are more vulnerable to prohibitive housing costs, overcrowding and severe housing deprivation than the rest of the population. For poor young people across Europe, the situation is becoming unbearable, with 65% in Germany, 78% in Denmark and 58% in the UK spending more than 40% of their disposable income on housing. The average in the EU is 48%.”

The report also found that Europe’s poor are being side-lined at a time when housing expenditure has increased while incomes have fallen.

“In general, people living below the poverty threshold are increasingly marginalised by a private rental market that feeds off a systemic lack of affordable housing.”

Non-EU citizens are another vulnerable group experiencing housing difficulties:

“Two-thirds of non-EU citizens are overburdened by housing costs in Greece, almost half in Spain and Belgium, more than one third in Ireland and Portugal, and more than one quarter in the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, and Slovenia.”

Unfit conditions

While homelessness and the rising cost of housing are proving to be growing problems across the EU, poor housing is are also a Europe-wide issue.  Across all European countries, a poor household is two to twelve times more likely to live in severe housing deprivation (leaking roof, dampness, poor sanitation) than other households, and in the European Union as a whole, one person in six lives in overcrowded housing.

Fuel poverty is another significant problem, affecting almost a quarter of poor households across the continent. In the UK, 9.4% of the population and 20.2% of poor households experience financial difficulty in maintaining adequate household temperatures.

Eviction: “a collective abandonment of other people”     

An entire chapter of the report is dedicated to eviction, which the authors describe as “…one of the worst forms of violence that can afflict someone.”

The figures from national governments and Eurostat highlight significant variations in the pattern of evictions in each EU country, with surges in the number of evictions in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia and the Netherlands, while six countries – the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia, Lithuania, Portugal and Sweden saw substantial reductions in the number of evictions.

The figures also show varying trends within the UK and differences between the private and public sectors. In England and Wales, rental disputes rose in the social housing sector, but fell in private housing; in Northern Ireland, property foreclosures rose slightly, while tenant evictions rose dramatically by 75%; in Scotland, eviction procedures of all kinds fell by 17%.

Addressing the issue

The report argues that the tools for dealing with the challenges of housing exclusion in Europe already exist, including Europe-wide networks of local, regional and national governments, and EU initiatives, such as the Urban Agenda and the European Pillar of Social Rights. The authors note that there are many examples of good housing practice, notably in Finland, whose “housing first” strategy has achieved a reduction in homelessness – the only EU country to do so.

However, the authors contend that Europe’s leaders need to rapidly activate the political will to tackle the problem of housing exclusion:

“The EU and Member States should place the elimination of homelessness in the core of their social policy agendas. Responses to homelessness should be mainstreamed into the design and implementation of relevant sectoral policies including youth, gender, migration, and Roma inclusion. The EU and the Member States can and should act to enforce social rights.”

Final thoughts

The report’s figures make sobering reading: more than 36 million households living in overcrowded conditions; almost 11 million households facing severe deprivation; more than 22 million households experiencing fuel poverty. Perhaps most worrying is the number of homeless people in Europe. This is an unknowable figure, but all the indications are that it is rising dramatically.

Published a week before the UK signalled its intention to leave the EU, the report received comparatively little media coverage. But if the problem of housing exclusion and homelessness continues to grow, it threatens to overwhelm political leaders at EU, national and local levels. It’s no exaggeration to suggest that homelessness could rival Brexit in its impact on the future of Europe.

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Christmas without a home

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By Heather Cameron

Last week saw George Clooney launch a campaign to feed the homeless at Christmas by donating the first £5.

When visiting Edinburgh’s branch of Scotland’s not-for-profit sandwich shop, Social Bite, last month, Clooney filmed a video clip on a staff member’s phone in which he pledged the first £5 donation to Social Bite’s £5 Christmas dinner appeal.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Olympic star Sir Chris Hoy, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, comedian Rob Brydon, broadcaster Chris Evans, and Scotland football manager Gordon Strachan have also pledged their support.

Last year’s campaign raised enough money to buy 36,000 meals to feed homeless people in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen for the whole year. Just 24 hours after Clooney’s initial donation, £165,000 was raised with over 33,000 people donating.

How many homeless?

Considering that Scottish local authorities logged 35,764 statutory homelessness assessments in 2014/15, of which 28,615 were assessed as ‘legally homeless’, this figure is impressive.

Nevertheless, the actual number of homeless people is likely to be far greater.

The latest data for Scotland suggests that 50,000 adults experience homelessness each year.

Shelter has estimated that 109,000 children in Britain will be homeless this Christmas, with nearly 5,000 of them in Scotland. According to the Scottish arm of charity, this is a 15% increase on last year’s figure, which:

“is simply not good enough and a badge of shame for such a relatively wealthy country”…The increased number of homeless children indicates a growing bottleneck of families stuck in temporary accommodation due to the major shortage of affordable housing across Scotland.”

upset boy against a wall

Government figures show that the number of people in temporary accommodation has grown over the past five years despite more than £1bn being spent on homelessness since 2010.

And these figures don’t include the hidden homeless that evade official statistics. According to Crisis, “official homelessness figures are masking the true scale of the problem”.

People living in overcrowded accommodation, shared accommodation, young single people and those in ‘concealed households’ (including groups/families/single people who are unable to form separate households and forced to live with others) can all be hidden from the system. And as local authorities only have to accommodate ‘statutory’ homeless people, these people are often hidden from support and advice as well as statistics.

Positive practice

As Social Bite’s Christmas dinner campaign shows though, good work is being done. Many homeless charities work tirelessly across the UK to provide services for people at Christmas time and indeed throughout the year.

The Salvation Army provides support and friendship to the homeless and other vulnerable people and its Christmas appeal for donations of time, money and gifts has seen much success over the years.

Crisis runs their Crisis at Christmas event across the country providing hot meals, fun activities, entertainment, health care and advice for the homeless. This year they have Christmas centres in Birmingham, Coventry, Edinburgh, London and Newcastle.

A new community initiative led by students at Darlington College aims to give homeless people in the town a Christmas lunch at the college, a cooking demonstration and festive meal at a local restaurant.

And as well as providing dinners for homeless people in Scotland, Social Bite will also be using donations to provide food and clothing packs for refugees in camps in Calais, the Serbia/Croatia border, and Lesbos.

Final thoughts

With the sheer scale and complexity of the issue, of course it won’t be possible for such initiatives to reach every homeless person. And with the combination of cuts to welfare and a severe lack of affordable housing across the UK, many more families are likely to face a fight to keep roofs over their heads.

So while we settle down to enjoy the festive period with our nearest and dearest, perhaps we should all spare a thought for those who simply seek the gift of shelter.

Further reading: if you liked this blog post, you might also want to read our previous blog on Britain’s hidden homeless. 

Our popular Ask-a-Researcher enquiry service is one aspect of the Idox Information Service, which we provide to members in organisations across the UK to keep them informed on the latest research and evidence on public and social policy issues. To find out more on how to become a member, get in touch.

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Out of sight, out of mind? Britain’s hidden homeless

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“It was one mate’s floor one night, another mate’s sofa the next night. There’s so much pressure not to let people know how bad your situation is, but deep down, you’re absolutely falling apart.”

In February, the latest Homelessness Monitor was published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the homelessness charity Crisis. Official estimates of rough sleeper numbers in England in 2013 were reported to have reached 2,414, a 37% rise since 2010.

But the authors suggested that the true figure could be at least four times that number because of a category of homeless people who rarely make it into the official statistics. These are the ‘hidden homeless’: people living in bed-and-breakfasts, in overcrowded squats, and hostels, on the floors and sofas of friends and family, and sometimes sleeping rough in the unlikeliest of locations. Often, they fall short of getting help from their local authority because they have been assessed as intentionally homeless, or they are not considered as priorities.

The problem is not a new one. But the Homelessness Monitor also indicated that today’s hidden homeless includes higher numbers of families, single and separated people, women and young people.

Any one of us could find ourselves in this position. It might take a breakdown in mental health, or the sudden impact of a job loss, a broken relationship, a rise in rent. In addition, changes to government housing benefit rules have meant people under-occupying accommodation are seeking smaller homes, substantially reducing the availability of one-bedroom social rented accommodation for single homeless people.

In 2012, a Department for Communities and Local Government evidence review of the costs of homelessness in England had difficulty in pinning down a definitive account of the financial costs to the government, or the opportunity costs to the rest of society. However, it did highlight the £345m spent by English local authorities on homelessness in 2010-11. Even though the hidden homeless may not be appearing on official figures, local councils are still providing tens of thousands of people with related support services, such as debt advice and family mediation.

The human costs of hidden homelessness are easier to identify. A ComRes poll last year found that one in five UK 16-25 year-olds had to stay with friends or extended family on floors or sofas in the previous twelve months because they had nowhere else to go.  Some were made homeless after they were evicted, others because of family relationship breakdown, and one in ten was forced to leave home due to domestic violence. Their chances of finding work, or sustaining their education will be greatly reduced.

Tackling the problem of hidden homelessness goes to the heart of a wider issue: the shortage of affordable housing. But it also means addressing the difficulties that can drive people from their homes.

Launching a 2014 report into homelessness among women, Alexia Murphy, head of the St Mungo’s women project, suggested that preventative solutions are achievable:

“An ‘easy win’ is to build better bridges between GPs and social services. Before women become homeless, they are often presenting to health professionals with headaches, depression and stress – but the root cause here is usually social.”

However, the problem also needs resources, and although there are government initiatives and support services to tackle homelessness among vulnerable people, housing campaigners believe more should be done.

In 2004, Shelter published a report highlighting the plight of the hidden homeless, and proposed 17 solutions to the problem. Ten years later, another report, from IPPR North , indicated that things were no better:

“Homeless households living in unsupported temporary accommodation represent a hidden social problem. It is absent from official statistics, and the acute and complex problems associated with such households are left unrecorded. This cannot continue”

Meanwhile, the voices of the hidden homeless, such as the one which opened this blog post are still struggling to be heard.

“If you’ve got nowhere to call home you’re always uncomfortable, always unsettled, you’re not safe.”

The Idox Information Service can give you access to a wealth of further information on housing policy issues. To find out more on how to become a member, contact us.

Further recent reading*

Addressing complex needs: improving services for vulnerable homeless people

Search for a home (homelessness in England)

Getting the house in order: keeping homeless older teenagers safe

Not home: the lives of hidden homeless households in unsupported temporary accommodation in England

Homelessness in Scotland 2014: getting behind the statistics

*Some resources may only be available to members of the Idox Information Service