15,795 HOMELESS Londoners have been forced into temporary accommodation outside their borough, a Freedom of Information request revealed yesterday.
Representing a third of the 47,137 homeless Londoners, these families are placed in Bed & Breakfasts or hostels outside of the boroughs responsible for housing them. This has produced an unprecedented crisis, especially for children, who are then forced to travel miles to and from school every day.
Eight councils moved people into temporary accommodation out of London altogether. They have been moved as far as the Midlands and the north of England, the figures showed. The longest a household spent in temporary accommodation, according to the figures, was 22 years in Tower Hamlets.
The council’s mayor John Biggs said a 22-year wait was ‘shockingly unusual’ and the average wait for a permanent home in the area was about seven years. Kate Webb, from the housing and homeless charity Shelter, said: ‘If you are sent to Birmingham and you refuse to go, the council can say you have intentionally made yourself homeless.’
Once the council has classed a family as making themselves ‘intentionally homeless’ they are under no obligation to re-house them at all and will leave them to sleep on the streets. The Freedom of Information request showed 47,137 households were being housed temporarily by 32 local authorities from March to August 2015.
Naomi Emmanuel, 24, and her two-year-old daughter Kira are among the more than 30,000 households with children who are in temporary accommodation across the capital. The fashion graduate and former nursery nurse ended up homeless after her mother died. She said she was moved five times over two years between three different London boroughs.
‘I had to take Kira out of nursery with a day’s warning. I had to quit a job with a day’s warning,’ she said. Kensington & Chelsea and Waltham Forest councils both housed the majority, more than two thirds of temporary households, outside their borders. Meanwhile, Hammersmith & Fulham housed homeless people in 28 other London boroughs, and Wandsworth housed people in 26 other parts of London.
• The housing crisis has become so acute that scores of homeless people have set up at least 30 tents in Manchester City centre, where they sleep as a community. However, Manchester City Council have now banned the tents. According to the council, homeless citizens are permitted to sleep in cardboard boxes, sleeping bags and bus shelters but not in tents.
