Our rent crisis will soon turn into a homelessness disaster

If you rent your home, you might be feeling worried about the future. Unaffordable rents are having a dramatic impact as people struggle with the cost of living crisis.

The cost of rent is skyrocketing and has been since the start of 2020. Now, thousands of families are forced to rent properties they can barely afford. They are facing devastating choices: do you heat your home or feed your children?

Many people, some of whom are in work, rely on housing benefit to keep a roof over their head. But it's not enough. Benefit levels haven’t been increased since 2018. The amount people receive is nowhere near enough to cover the costs of renting in 2023.

The closer you look, the worse things get. Joint research from Zoopla and Crisis shows that fewer that one in eight properties in the private rented sector are affordable to people who receive housing benefit. This is double the government’s own estimates.

Some properties are completely out of reach for people on low incomes. According to the research, there are only 20 affordable one-bedroom properties for people on housing benefit in more than half of the UK’s local authorities.

This bleak situation is being compounded by a shortage of social housing where people can actually afford to live.

In short: people are being pushed into homelessness.

It’s a situation reminiscent of the 1960’s docudrama Cathy Come Home. The question inevitably arises: are we on course to revisit the housing conditions and poverty of the past?

The government doesn’t have a coherent housing policy or any sort of strategy to address this looming crisis.

In Kent, the situation is desperate. Funding for homelessness support has been cut at a time when people need help more than ever.

Politicians must wake up to the reality that unless drastic action is taken, more people will be made homeless because they can no longer afford to keep a roof over their head.