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Did you know that Britain currently has one the worst record of all developed economies when it comes to homelessness?
In London, the most recent rough sleeping statistics (via the Combined Homelessness and Information Network, Chain) reveal the number of people living on the streets has risen by 26 per cent over the past year.
Of these, 1,872 people were intermittently rough sleeping – 16 per cent higher than October to December 2023. More than 700 people were thought to be continually living on the streets, 26 per cent higher than 2024.
But homelessness doesn’t only present itself as rough sleeping.
At 74, I got evicted - I was homeless, and terrified
Read MoreAccording to the Government’s own data, by the middle of last year 123,000 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation. This is an increase of 16.3 per cent from June 2023. The number of households that contained families with children increased by 15.1 percent to 78,420.
The figures are obtained by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on temporary accommodation via the NHS-funded National Child Mortality Database. They also revealed that 58 of those children were babies under the age of one.
Across the OECD (a group which includes countries like Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the US), in nearly all countries less than 1 per cent of the population is reported to be experiencing homelessness. This represents more than two million people.
There is only one country which reports a higher figure. That’s New Zealand (2.17 per cent), and this can be explained by the fact that their definition of homelessness is broader than ours and captures more people. It includes not just rough sleeping or temporary accommodation but also people “living in uninhabitable accommodation”.
As the OECD notes, since 2022, following the pandemic, most countries where homelessness data is recorded have reported an increase in the number of people who are experiencing homelessness. The UK, along with the US, Ireland and the Netherlands, has seen a particularly steep rise.
The answer is surprisingly straightforward. So straightforward, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for wondering why our politicians let things get so bad.
England has far fewer dwellings relative to its population than other developed nations we typically consider peers, with 434 homes per 1,000 inhabitants, significantly fewer than France (590), Italy (587) and the OECD average of 487.
As a 2023 report from the Home Builders Federation (HBF) shows, this relative shortage of affordable homebuilding has led to a situation where house prices in the UK have been growing faster than incomes. The affordability disparity here is greater than when compared to the EU benchmark.
The UK's homelessness crisis - mapped
Read MoreWe’re in a place where no OECD country should be. A place where people, including children, are dying, where private renters fear rent hikes and have resigned themselves to never owning a home and a place where homelessness is fast becoming a permanent feature of modern life.
Unless a significant number of the 1.5 million homes Labour has pledged to build over the next five years are genuinely affordable, our population of people who are being forced into homelessness will continue to grow.
The Chancellor said she hopes that connecting Britain’s two major university cities could create “Europe’s Silicon Valley”.
Labour is expected to announce the locations of its new towns soon, and all signs suggest some are going to be in this part of the country.
Ask me anything
This week’s question is from a reader who wants to know whether there is “a fear in Whitehall of coming across as London/south England-centric when talking about the housing crisis?”
However, things are very different now and there is a broad acknowledgement among civil servants and ministers alike that there is a housing crisis and that it is a national problem. That’s why there’s so much talk of new towns and why regional mayors have been involved in policymaking from the get-go with the new Government.
This question was submitted as part of a live Reddit special Ask Me Anything that I took part in last week. See all of my responses here.
Vicky’s pick
Last week, I went to Naples and visited the archaeological ruins of Pompeii for the first time. Since then, I’ve been watching the BBC documentary series The New Dig about a new excavation at Pompeii which is uncovering almost a third of the city for the first time since it was covered in ash by Mount Vesuvius.
Like us, the people of Ancient Rome were obsessed with housing and, in particular, it’s incredible to see how they lived and decorated their homes.
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