‘They told me there is no social housing’: Families are homeless, but 33,000 homes are empty

Tens of thousands of social housing units currently sit empty, despite the country facing a national housing crisis.

There are 33,993 vacant council properties in England, the highest number since 2009. And Sky News can reveal that more than 6,000 public homes have been empty for more than a year.

These include several homes that have been locked up for more than two decades on an estate in Lambeth, south London, and 144 apartments in a boarded-up tower block in the neighboring Southwark district, which has been vacant since 2015. are being redeveloped, but construction costs have risen so much that it is about to be demolished.

Sky News has worked with housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa to reveal the number of vacant council properties using Freedom of Information requests.

Mr Tweneboa told Sky News: “You have people sleeping on the streets. You have people sleeping in garages and storage containers. Yet we have thousands of empty houses, social housing across the country. that are not used. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Analysis: Why is this happening?

By Kwajo Tweneboa, housing activist

It is clear that Britain is facing the biggest housing crisis since the Second World War, with more than a million people desperate for social housing and enough homeless children in England to fill the O2 Arena more than seven times over. its 145,000 children.

We found that local authorities across England are struggling with thousands of empty homes, while public housing waiting lists continue to grow.

The 33,000 vacant homes owned by local authorities could be used as temporary housing or as long-term social housing.

Why is this happening at a time when many municipalities are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and paying out billions for privately owned temporary housing?

The most obvious answer here is serious mismanagement by housing departments across the country and a lack of oversight from Westminster.

Thousands of these vacant homes have been empty for more than a year. That’s a year without rental income and a year in which someone who desperately needs a home has to go without.

I believe that this is essentially a complete dereliction of duty and embarrassment on behalf of councils and the government.

This isn’t a problem that can simply be attributed to a lack of funding, it’s a failure to address the problem in recent years – and resulting in unnecessary suffering for so many I’ve met who simply want somewhere to call ‘home’ .

Instead of repairing the homes they own, councils pay millions every year to private landlords to house families in temporary emergency accommodation, including bed and breakfasts.

The latest figures show that 145,800 children in England are homeless and living in temporary accommodation – a record high and 15% more than a year ago.

Rose, 21, lives with her young daughters in a single room at a bed and breakfast in Streatham, Lambeth.

For Rose – who works part-time and is studying to become an air traffic controller – private renting in South London is out of the question.

She says she constantly worries about the impact of being homeless on her daughters, ages five and two.

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“My firstborn still wears diapers because she can’t just get up in the middle of the night and go to a shared toilet with all these people she doesn’t know,” she says. “My baby, it took her time to walk because she didn’t have enough space and she couldn’t use the baby walker.”

She regularly calls Croydon Council to find out if she is closer to an offer of a permanent home, but a recent call to a council worker has left her worried.

“She told me you need to move out of London and get a house,” says Rose. “She told me there is no social housing, and those were her words: we have no social housing.”

Still, a short drive from where Rose lives, we showed her dozens of vacant houses.

The houses are on a Lambeth estate earmarked for redevelopment several years ago. Although many of the properties have been cleared, there are no signs of construction work.

Rose says the revelation that there are empty council homes in London has left her feeling ‘heartbroken, lied to and cheated’.

The Local Government Association (LGA) blames the shortage of funding for councils on the number of vacant properties.

Victor Chamberlain, a housing spokesman for the LGA, told Sky News that in many cases “the council doesn’t have the money to be able to refurbish them and put them back into use as social housing”.

He said money would instead be paid to private landlords for temporary accommodation because councils “have a duty as local authorities to ensure that no one is sleeping rough or that they do not have a safe place to sleep every night”.

Mr Chamberlain continued: ‘That means we need to redirect funding towards those goals and away from building the new social housing, which is absolutely essential to solving the problem.

‘It’s complete mismanagement. You know, it’s a completely false economy.

“If we cannot spend the money on the actual solution, but use a Band-Aid of temporary housing, then the system is broken.”

Lambeth Council told Sky News: “Lambeth is doing everything it can to bring vacant homes back into use as quickly as possible.”

It added: “The majority of our vacant properties have been vacant for less than six months.”

We asked Croydon Council why Rose was told there was no social housing available.

A few days later it responded: “We have been working with our resident to find more suitable accommodation to suit their needs and have identified a permanent home that we will be offering to them shortly.

‘Croydon has been hit by an increase in homelessness and a housing shortage across London.

“Unfortunately, this means that permanent homes are not always available for families as quickly as we would like.”

Additional reporting by Community Producer Nick Stylianou.

Analysis: Why is this happening?

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