The number of homeless households seeking help from Brighton and Hove City Council has more than doubled, councillors were told on Thursday (5 October).
The increase is one of the main reasons for a projected £8.9 million overspend in the current financial year.
Labour councillor Jacob Taylor asked for details about forecast overspend on temporary housing at the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee meeting.
A report to the committee said that a forecast overspend of £1.8 million on temporary housing included £1 million of savings which were “unlikely to be met”.
Demand for temporary housing has increased since January, fuelling the projected overspend which is also linked to rising rents.
A key factor was nightly booked emergency housing which was forecast to overspend by £1.3 million, the report said.
An average of 153 households a night were in “spot purchased” places, more than three times higher than budgeted.
The report said that this demand was driven by private property owners selling up and evicting tenants and an increase in the number of people fleeing domestic abuse.
The council’s senior housing official, Rachel Sharpe, said that 15 to 20 households usually approached the council each week as “homeless on the day”.
But recently the number had risen to more than 50 a week.
She said: “Housing affordability in the city is proving a problem both for those who come to see us and those who are teetering on the edge of homelessness.
“Rents in the city have increased but there have been no increases in local housing allowance rates so the contractual costs to us have also increased with our temporary accommodation costs rising around 30 per cent year on year.”
Ms Sharpe said that the gap between benefit income and the price paid by the council for emergency and temporary housing would cost about £11,500 a year for each property.
Nationally, there were 104,500 households in temporary housing which, she said, was the highest it has ever been.
Measures to reduce costs included moving people from emergency housing to senior schemes if they were over 55 and converting temporary housing arrangements into assured short-hold tenancies, let directly by landlords.
Ms Sharpe said that the demand for temporary housing would mean that measures would have to be taken to reduce other budgets within the council’s housing service.
Labour council leader Bella Sankey said that the figures were “startling”.
Outside the meeting, Councillor Sankey said: “It’s a shameful indictment of our failed Tory government that, in Brighton and Hove, we have 50 families per week presenting as homeless.
“These are families whose lives are uprooted, turned upside down and forced into insecure circumstances, with all of the anxiety that brings.
“The Conservatives have unleashed a hurricane of homelessness throughout our country and if they had a shred of decency, they would recognise the crisis they’ve created, step aside and call a general election.”
Perhaps the council needs to get tougher with this. I know one lady with substantial savings that refused to rent somewhere as she said if she was homeless the council would find her nice emergency housing and the council accepted this. I also wonder what the councils welcoming junkies and being the city of sanctuary has done to this bill. There is a shortage of rental accommodation and these kind of people and those not working are the first types of people landlords don’t want to accommodate when there is high demand for rental accommodation and who then expect emergency housing.
Good to know where my council tax is spent and it isn’t to maintain the city. Fed up of paying into a system that i have very little benefit out of. Typical socialitstic behavuoir funded by cpaitalism!
You know that’s an oxymoronic statement, right? Also, you get a letter every year about how your tax is spent, it shouldn’t be a surprise.
Perhaps I should get a say where I’d like my council to be spent …. right!
Council tax
Maybe, but you don’t outside of legal sensibilities obligations, so it’s a moot point I’m afraid.
And finding the homeless homes achieves what?
Finds them a home they can’t afford to keep warm in or afford to buy food and have to rely on Food Banks?
What has happened in this country and done to us by the Conservatives is nothing short of than criminal!!!
This country is in a mess because we’re governed (ruled over more like), by a political elite that do not live in the reality that they force us mere mortals have to live in and clearly don’t care, has never cared abd will never care about us ordinary people that pays them to live in luxury while persecuting us to the point in making suicide the biggest killer in the UK!!!
All they offer us, is poverty is poverty wages and unsuitable housing or no housing and starve to death as they’ve destroyed the welfare safety net and continue to demonise people that are poor or immigrants to defect from their criminal incompetence that had led to half a millions deaths of British people as a direct result of Conservative Policies!
It’s genocide! There’s no other word for what the Conservatives are guilty of!
And it won’t change until Parliament is run BY the people FOR the people, because right up to now, it never has been and is highly likely, never will be, all the time we’re in the hands of people that think they have the devine right to rule us and not govern FOR us!
I wonder if the British will ever get the bottle the French did in the 1700’s, to rid themselves of an out of touch corrupt few, that have the audacity to claim they’re representatives of the people, when they are so clearly – not!!!!
Having a safe place to home is the first step on achieving anything. Being healthy, being productive, being happy, being engaged; it all starts with a good four walls.
You have your chance to remove the current government at the General Election. I hope you make use of your vote.
Well said Benjamin.
You sound like a deluded old hippy with a mindset from the 70’s
Ad hominems only betray a lack of an intelligent response, Johnny. I invite and challenge you to do better with your future comments.
I’m not surprised there are more homeless people. Covid saw some businesses going bust, some staff with zero contracts or agency, energy prices rocketed, plus general cost of living escalated etc etc. Indeed as Sarah+the+Starfish has said, there are some people that manipulate the system. Housing across the board, and also the housing system, it is not just those on the housing register that need support, need hope. I think that was a bit of a rant from me, but it came from the heart.
Something that highlighted to me is how little ASB reports translate into evictions. In the last two quarters, with excess of 500 ASB reports, there was only one eviction.
Either BHCC is doing an beyond amazing job is sustaining tenancies, or there is an opportunity to be tougher on ASB.
If the council make it difficult and expensive to be a landlord in the city then those in that business will sell-up and move on.
When they sell many of the properties become private dwellings rather than remaining on the rental market.
Unfortunately, data shows that private landlords make no difference to the housing market stock when they up and leave. The important aspect is principle housing.
Landlords, Buy-to-rent, investment properties, – homelessness.
A large number of landlords are also no longer prepared to provide emergency housing to the council. One I spoke to that owns a very high number of properties said the council kept on dumping dangerous nutters in their properties and so they no longer accept council referral people. This pushes up the price to the council for those still prepared to take this risk.
This is very true. Although a couple of reasons, sensitive lets do get a reputation and even after the tenant moves on, the property is marked as such, increasing the risk of cuckcooing.
There’s also the sort that leaves the property in poor condition afterwards, although I understand that the council does make them good again, but that’s an additional cost on a shoestring budget.
And the dedicated council owned properties have a terrible reputation, maybe this could be improved with better high presence management, but I don’t know enough to say either way.