by Alexandra Flores
London has a high concentration of people who dream of benefiting from the extensive opportunities it has to offer. Every year, people in various sectors of the labour market, especially recent graduates, agonise over how many hours they need to work to earn enough money to get housing that is, at the very least, decent.
By the time they face reality, they are forced to settle down and opt to live in less favourable conditions that suit their budget or, as a last resort, to ask the council for help in order to have a temporary place to live.
London is “at the heart of the nation’s housing crisis” and due to “its higher housing costs, the capital has a lower proportion of homeowners than any other region in England,’’ Jon Tabbush, senior researcher at Centre for London spokesperson, told the Evening Standard.
Increasing inequality
According to City A.M, London is a global city with the highest overall economic growth rate in the UK, set to expand by 2.6 percent in the upcoming year, even during the recession.
The economy is strong for the long-term, but while inequality and consequently poverty also increases; many Londoners and non-Londoners considering moving to the capital are struggling to secure quality housing.
Wilson Craw, acting Director of a campaign group Generation Rent told the The Guardian: ‘’The failure to build enough homes in places that people want to live has created “the worst rental market we’ve ever seen”.
The Health Foundation, an organization who carries out research analysis, measures the proportions of households living from private renters to social-renters in non-decent homes by housing tenure from 2006 – 2020, where those who live by private rent are surprisingly likely to live in more non-decent housing conditions.
Courtesy of The Health Foundation
Compared to the rest of the regions in England, the capital has a different type of housing profile and renting is more prevalent than outright ownership. In 2022, GOV.UK showed that 29% of households in London were private renters, compared to 17% from the rest of the country, while the social renter sector was up by 22% in London, compared to 16% in the rest of England.
Courtesy of the Government of the United Kingdom website
Social housing and council support
In an interview for Sky News, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: ‘’From day one as Mayor, I’ve been emphatic in saying that the housing crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing our city.’’
Social housing is a way many people with low income seek to secure affordable renting. These are provided by either housing organizations that own, let and manage rented housing or by the local councils and overall these social homes are likely to meet the ‘decent’ standards of living conditions for people.
The government’s purpose was to start building 116,000 affordable homes since 2015, but days ago The Guardian published an article announcing the surpassing of a landmark in housebuilding with nearly 120,000 social homes in the capital.
The Mayor of London posted a tweet showing the record numbers of social housing they are building to help tackle the housing crisis.
But until the houses are built, years can pass and people opt to apply for temporary homes or space offered by the councils while they are still on the waiting list for social housing.
Earl, 58, who declined to give his surname, is a progression coach and support worker at Mulberry Heights Hostel, a resource center located in Tottenham. ‘’There is not enough houses for everyone. All the social houses from the ’90’s are sold out and the ones from this century that the government provided are also sold out, and many also come here because of the high cost of renting and cost of living and other reasons too,’’ he said.
According to Shelter, almost 2.5 million renters are getting behind or struggling to pay their rent while one in three pay out half of their income only in housing in the capital.
‘’These people have to go first with the council, in this case the Haringey Council. Then they make a referral and interview them. After that they analyze their situation and why they are looking for a temporary place to stay and the manager usually looks at these to know if we can support them for housing needs,’’ Earl said.
In a recent data source from Trust for London, every borough in London has had an increase in the proportion of households living in temporary accommodations than the average in the rest of the country.
Earl said: ‘’The council helps us, we apply for housing benefits that come with it, but only from the Council.’’
This is a common case in London, where local authorities provide help for the homeless with important benefits to live decently.
’’The benefits that we provide are furnished shared flats, with all the implements they need to live while they are on the waiting list. And encourage them to find jobs or do volunteering,’’ Earl added.
Local authorities are facing challenges of increasing demand to support homelessness services in a proper accommodation for these people.
‘’The maximum time they can be here is what we expect, two years. We are flexible but it will depend on the situation; hopefully, they go before. With all the help we support them to leave independently either social or private renting,’’ Earl said.
Private renting
While many are struggling to wait and pay to have proper affordable housing, there is the other side of the coin who can afford private rentals.
This type of housing in the UK is a property owned by a landlord and leased to a tenant. Usually the landlord is an individual or a property company.
Sandra Arias, 29, a freelance architect living in Kilburn at North-West London said: ‘’I found my housing in an application called Right to Move where several agencies post apartment, houses and even rooms to rent.’’
Right to Move uses agents to ensure the tenants that there is a professional on hand that also manages the property.
Arias commented: ‘’Since everything is handled through an agent so everything is legal and reliable.’’
But even the selection process by domiciliary agents takes time due to the amount of applications and the due filtering that prospective tenants have to go through. According to Dabora Conway, a property specialist agency, they usually ask for employment records and renting history as primary documents to let.
‘’The process was a bit long, around four months since I had applied to many agencies. Since there are many people applying for the same house, at the same time; therefore it can take a few months to receive a response from them, but in the end it was very satisfying,’’ Arias said.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities told The Guardian: ‘’We will bring forward a renters reform bill in this parliament, abolishing ‘no fault evictions’ so that all tenants have greater security in their homes and are empowered to challenge poor conditions and unreasonable rent rises.’’
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