Lambeth (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Lambeth residents on a 35,000 housing waiting list claim a shortage of 3-4 bedroom council homes, raising concern over the council’s ability to meet housing needs.
Families in South London who have been waiting for a home on a council’s housing waiting list for more than ten years have voiced their concerns about what appears to be a decline in the quantity of larger social homes up for bid.
Families who are either living in cramped quarters or outside the borough, far from their places of employment and children’s schools, say they are fortunate if a three- or four-bedroom apartment comes up every month.
They claim that they are anxious and depressed about their prospects of ever finding a suitable home because of the apparent decline in the quantity of larger properties available.
Consuelo Gutierrez Collazo, one of the occupants, claimed that over the ten years she has been looking for a Lambeth council home, she has relocated six times between temporary housing.
The 41-year-old and her three children, ages ten, six, and four, currently reside in an outside London council.
Speaking partially through a translator last week (March 13), she said:
“Recently, I’m seeing maybe one or two suitable [three bedroom] flats to bid on monthly. It’s getting worse.
Before, it was a little bit better. I was seeing maybe 12 per month.
The situation is stressful. Last week, there was one three-bedroom flat but there were hundreds bidding on the same property. The chance of getting the property is very low.”
Ms Gutierrez Collazo said her two boys, who attend school in Lambeth, sometimes struggled to get to school on time from their current temporary accommodation due to the over two-hour commute. She added:
“A permanent house would be a big improvement. It would make taking the kids to school and going to work much easier.”
After 11 years of waiting for a public home, Marianela Ramos Apiricio called the decline in acceptable properties coming up through Lambeth’s bidding system a “very bad” development.
The 33-year-old currently shares a two-bedroom apartment in Wandsworth with her 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, paying £1,600 a month to a private landlord.
She said:
“At the moment, it’s a struggle. There’s usually just one property that has three bedrooms in a month, sometimes zero. A property a month is not enough for all the people needing one.”
According to Ms. Ramos Apiricio, sharing a room is “complicated” now that both of her children are teenagers.
She went on to say that although they were both doing well in school, the small space in their bedroom or the kitchen-lounge of the apartment made studying difficult.
Since 2004, Esther King, who resides in a two-bedroom apartment with her spouse and five kids, has been waiting for a Lambeth council home with four bedrooms.
The 46-year-old claimed that the issue has gotten worse since she first observed a decline in the quantity of larger residences coming up for sale during the Covid-19 outbreak.
She said:
“It’s sometimes three months – no [four bedroom] properties. Sometimes [it’s] eight months – no [four bedroom] properties. There are clearly not enough houses.”
Lambeth Council responded that ‘high demand and limited availability’ meant that larger homes were being ‘assigned quicker than ever’ and spending ‘less time on the bidding system’ (in reference to the apparent decline in the number of three and four-bedroom social housing available).
However, Liz Wyatt of the local housing support group Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) offered an alternative explanation.
According to Ms. Wyatt, HASL thought the council was offering social housing to families in temporary housing more directly in an effort to lower the number of families living there.
Ms. Wyatt asserted that as a result, there are now fewer houses up for bid via the council’s auction mechanism. Lambeth Council did not answer when the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) asked whether it would like to address HASL’s allegations.
Approximately 4,800 households in Lambeth are presently living in temporary housing, which the council claims is frequently of “sub-standard” quality.
According to Ms. Wyatt, there was “no guarantee” that social homes distributed in this manner were “going to those with the highest housing need,” even if HASL wasn’t against the Labour-run council making direct offers in “exceptional circumstances.”
She added:
“The council runs a housing waiting list which is rightly ordered according to housing need. Those families in emergency Band A [on] the waiting list… are essentially facing queue jumping by the council’s direct offer process, which is focusing on those in temporary accommodation.”
A Lambeth Council spokesperson said:
“The shortage of family-sized accommodation and the need to use temporary accommodation is driving our need to make huge savings as a council.
Homeless households supported by the council have increased by 50 per cent in the last two years and the cost of housing homeless households in overnight accommodation is expected to reach £100 million this year.”
It’s not just Lambeth that this is impacting. London Councils have reported that London boroughs are forecast to overspend on their original budget plans for this financial year by more than £700 million.
Homelessness represents the largest single driver of London boroughs’ current financial pressures.
How long have residents been waiting for three and four bedroom properties?
There is a severe lack of larger houses in the UK, which results in long wait times. Long wait times are a result of the vastly higher demand for three- and four-bedroom homes in many places than there is supply.
For instance, the typical waiting period in Bury is roughly 761 days for a three-bedroom property and 871 days for a four-bedroom property.
The typical wait time for social housing is approximately 6.6 years in other places, such as London.
There have been reports of waiting up to 67 years for a four-bedroom property in certain extreme situations, like Barking and Dagenham. This demonstrates the lack of available real estate in certain areas.