The margin between having a home and not is surprisingly thin and can be crossed suddenly. It happened to my family in the 2000s. My father was a printer and his company made him redundant after the industry’s contraction from digitalisation and outsourcing. In his search for work, my family left our home in Exeter for a promised position in the north-west of England. This job fell through. With no permanent abode, we entered a protracted cycle of staying with relatives and scraping together money to afford out-of-season B&Bs or caravan sites. My parents struggled to find and then retain employment without a permanent address. We were homeless for five years. I was in primary school when it began and well into my teens when it ended.
Stories about homelessness are difficult to hear and to tell. On a nationwide level, personal experiences simply become statistics. Nevertheless, the UK’s record on homelessness is the worst in the developed world. According to OECD figures and recent reporting in the Financial Times, one in 200 households have no fixed residence. On another metric – homelessness per 10,000 people – the UK’s rate stands at 51.4, much higher than second-worst Belgium at 31. The US, with whom we like to favourably compare our welfare state, is in fifth place, albeit with a much higher proportion sleeping on the streets. Behind these figures are people – individuals and families who know what homelessness means. Amid the churn of commentary and policy statements about the problem, their voices are rarely heard. This issue is one of Britain’s most shameful social ills – and one the Labour government must confront.
In 2024, the housing charity Shelter reported that a record 145,800 children in England did not have a home. If your child is at school, there is a not inconsiderable chance they know someone in this situation. That said, homeless children often keep such information to themselves out of shame, something I certainly felt. Many young homeless people will also spend protracted periods out of school. My parents registered my brother and I as home educated with different local authorities and we kept up with the national curriculum by reading textbooks. But even if schooling can be maintained, the patterns of normal childhood are warped. The homeless child’s clothes and toys stay in suitcases. It is difficult for them to make friends. They do not have a bedroom for privacy. As few of our relatives possessed a spare room, my family regularly slept on living-room floors. I remember the morning routine of neatly rolling up bedding ready to be laid out again on the carpet in the evening. I also recall the difficult conversations between my parents about where to go next that could not be held out of earshot. Although these pressures break many families, mine managed to stay together.
This condition – the constant and stressful instability of moving between friends, family and B&Bs – does not fit the predominant understanding of homelessness. To most people, homelessness means rough sleeping, and they have only to walk down any high street to find it. But, as with my family, most people without a home live in some type of temporary accommodation. This represents over 80 per cent of homelessness cases across the OECD. If there is no support network to fall back on, councils are statutorily obliged to pay for a B&B or a hotel. And the expenditure is enormous. According to figures from the housing charity Crisis, English local authorities spent £2.3bn to provide temporary accommodation in the period between April 2023 and March 2024 alone. In many areas, fulfilling these obligations has pushed perilous local government finances to breaking point.
Social housing – supplied by a local authority or a housing association – can offer an escape from temporary accommodation into a permanent home. In 2023, 1.29 million households in England were on a waiting list for a council property. And it is not always straightforward even to get that far. When we returned to Exeter in the mid-2000s and registered for social housing, officials defined us as “intentionally homeless” (a legal phrase) because we had “chosen” to leave our home five years before. This label pays little heed to structural factors outside of a family’s control – in our case, my father being made redundant. It did not matter that five of us, at that point, were crammed in a relative’s one-bedroom flat. Our understanding of homelessness was not the same as the council’s. As such, homelessness figures are shaped by who the state acknowledges, and who it does not.
Today, local authorities usually rely on online portals where families “bid” for properties. The applicant’s needs – again, open to interpretation – determine housing options. I often visited the local library with my parents to use a computer to place bids. We never met with success. No wonder, then, that large numbers of people drop off waiting lists or do not bother joining at all. To policymakers, these people are part of the “hidden homeless”, an apt phrase for a ghost-like existence set apart from the beat of everyday life. Labour-run Enfield Council provides a current example of how punitive securing a council house can be, especially if you turn down the options presented. According to reporting in the Guardian, Enfield left 100 households without support last year after families on its housing list refused to be relocated outside of the borough, away from family and friends (some had been offered properties as far away as Liverpool).
Britain’s appalling record on homelessness stems from a loss of social housing and a wider lack of house construction. Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy has led to two million social homes sold since 1980, and only 2 per cent replaced as successive governments neglected to build council housing. The policy gave many working-class people a foot on the property ladder. But it has left an uneven legacy. Research from the New Economics Foundation reveals that over 40 per cent of all the properties sold under Right to Buy are now owned by private landlords. Both the Conservatives and Labour have facilitated the transformation of social homes into privately rented housing.
According to Shelter, private accommodation is 64 per cent less affordable than homes provided by councils or housing associations. But, with social housing lists so long, many people must rent. The UK’s low levels of housebuilding push up rents. Data from the Financial Times reveals that the UK only built 33.5 homes per 1,000 people last decade, almost half the number built by the countries topping the OECD rankings. In 2006, to escape our own difficulties securing a council house, my parents entered Exeter’s private rental market. The feeling of finally having a roof over our heads was indescribable. However, with jobs as a van driver and an NHS cleaner, my parents struggled to afford the rent. Hard work was, and is, no guarantee of housing security.
In the 2010s, Britain’s already poor record on homelessness worsened. As research by the political scientist Tom O’Grady illustrates, the decade witnessed a material and social shift: cuts to welfare, and the cultural demonisation of its recipients. The policies introduced by Conservative-led governments led to the poorest 10 per cent of the population losing, on average, 11 per cent of their income, which rose to 20 per cent if they were a household with children. It caused ballooning food-bank use, higher child poverty and expanded homelessness. An inability to afford rent – exacerbated by inadequate Universal Credit or the freezing of Local Housing Allowance – became the strongest driver of homelessness.
The erosion of social services and welfare support under austerity carried other, less visible, impacts. While homeless, I registered with my local college through the Connexions career service and received an educational maintenance allowance (EMA). These additions to the welfare state under New Labour eased my return to formal education, despite my housing situation. I gained wonderful teachers and made friends. Though I had nowhere to study for my GCSEs at home, I benefited from public libraries. The coalition government abolished EMA in 2010 and wrapped up Connexions in 2012, making the routes back into normal life more difficult for young people. We are also currently losing 40 libraries a year to cuts.
One of the UK’s assets in reversing the tide of homelessness is a vibrant network of campaigners, charities and researchers working to develop solutions. Their hopes rest on the current Labour government’s promised cross-departmental workforce headed by Angela Rayner. Ministers are aiming for the highest level of affordable housebuilding since the 1960s. Recently, Labour announced a £2bn investment to construct 18,000 affordable and social homes. If passed, the Renters’ Rights Bill will allow private tenants to challenge rent increases and “no fault” evictions. These are all positive steps.
However, this government risks taking on the rhetoric and priorities of an austerity administration. The last Budget did not unfreeze Local Housing Allowance, as campaigners argued for. More troublingly, the cuts to benefits recently announced by the Department for Work and Pensions are predicted to push more people into homelessness. It is unclear if Rayner’s cross-departmental workforce will have the clout to highlight, let alone reverse, these conflicting policies. Tackling housing insecurity requires not only building more houses and making rents more manageable but also stemming the poverty that drives the problem in the first place, a coordination of state planning we have not seen for a generation.
In 2012, my parents left the rental market and finally secured a council home. They now live on an estate built in the early 1950s, a period of high confidence in urban planning. It has shops and a health centre converted from an old church. Nearby, there is access to the river and a playing field. The rows of red-bricked houses with gardens are reminders of what an ambitious state taking responsibility looks like. When I visit, they also bring me a feeling of something I did not have for a long time: a home. A country as wealthy as ours – and in which housing has widely come to be seen as nothing more resonant than a vault to store that wealth – should be able to guarantee that feeling for everyone.
[See also: How Birmingham became Britain’s scapegoat]
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