Housing

8,100 people were seen sleeping rough at least once by a homeless outreach team in London in 2016/17, the same number as the previous year. The number of people sleeping rough in London has increased dramatically since 2007, and in 2015/16 was almost three times the number a decade ago in 2006. 

Over the period where rough sleeping has risen, the number of new rough sleepers has also risen, from 1,600 in 2007 to 5,100 in 2016/17. There is a high turnover, with 77% of rough sleepers seen sleeping out only once or twice. 

Only 15% of people recorded as sleeping rough in London in 2016/17 were women. However, many homeless women are ‘hidden homeless’ (for example they are sofa surfing or being sexually exploited in exchange for shelter) in order to avoid sleeping on the streets (where they also face a very high risk of sexual violence and exp…

75% of all rough sleepers were in Inner London in 2016/17, with 32% in Westminster and 43% in other Inner London boroughs. The number of rough sleepers in Westminster increased over this five-year period, but rose more quickly elsewhere meaning its share of total rough sleepers has fallen. 

The proportion of rough sleepers in Outer London has risen from 17% in 2011/12 to 25% in 2016/17, with 2% of total rough sleepers recorded in Heathrow airport. This offers some further evidence of disadvantage in London shifting out towards the outer boroughs. 

In 2016/17, the number of homelessness acceptances across London was 18,100. This marked a decline from the highest number of acceptances in a decade from the previous year (19,200). This is the first year acceptances have declined, rather than increased, since 2009/10. 

These figures reflect statutory homelessness (those who the local authority has determined are legally entitled to assistance). To be accepted as statutorily homeless by the local authority you must be found legally and unintentionally homeless, be eligible for assistance (based on citizenship and/or immigration status) and in priority need (the most common reasons to be found in priority need are having children in the household or meeting the criteria for ‘vulnerability’ through age or health issues). Given this strict definition, there are probably far more homeless ho…

Although the levels of homelessness in London were more than double those in the rest of England, at 5 per 1,000 households compared with 2 per 1,000 in 2016/17, this varies considerably by London borough by year. Newham is the only borough with a rate over 10 per 1,000 households in 2016/17. Factors likely to be driving this phenomenon in Newham include the high proportion of families with children receiving housing benefit living in the private rental sector, and rapidly rising rents in the borough over the past five years (median rents rose 45% between the beginning of 2012 and 2016, the third highest increase in London). 

In 2015/16, Waltham Forest and Barking & Dagenham both also had rates above 10 per 1,000 households. Despite a large decline in the number of households they accepted as homeless over the past year in both boroug…

A total of 30,000 cases of homelessness prevention or relief were estimated to have taken place in London in 2016/17, in cases where local authorities did not have a statutory duty. This is unchanged from the previous year, but down from the peak of 34,000 in 2013/14. 

Homelessness prevention can either involve helping people facing homelessness to secure alternate accommodation, or helping someone to remain in their home (for example by brokering a repayment schedule between the tenant and the landlord to avoid eviction). Homelessness relief involves helping a household secure accommodation when the household does not meet the statutory definition of homelessness (see above). 

There were 3,400 cases of homelessness relief in 2016/17, where the local authority helped someone into secure accommodation despite not being under statutory duty.…

Of the 13,000 cases in London where homelessness was prevented or relieved and the household moved home in 2016/17, 5,900 moved to private rented accommodation, 45% of all cases. A similar amount moved to social rented accommodation, supported accommodation and hostels or houses in multiple occupation (HMO), with 1,900 moving to a social rent, 2,000 to a hostel or HMO and 2,300 to supported accommodation. 

The proportion of households that moved into private rented accommodation is down from five years previously, when it was 53% of all cases prevented or relieved where the household moved home. This has been driven by a fall in the absolute number of households moving to private rent, down from 8,500 households in 2011/12. The number of households moving into other types of accommodation has remained fairly unchanged over five years. 

How…

The number of households in temporary accommodation in London in the first quarter of 2017 was 54,000, compared with 23,000 across the rest of England. This marks a sixth consecutive increase at the same point in previous years, with 2,000 more households in temporary accommodation than a year previously, and a 48% increase on five years previously.

The number of households in temporary accommodation follows a similar pattern to the number of households accepted as homeless, with an increase in the mid-2000s to a peak of 63,000 in 2006, followed by falls to 2011 and subsequent rises. There was a slight lag between peak numbers of homeless acceptances and numbers in temporary accommodation. This is probably due to the length of time many households remain in temporary accommodation; at the beginning of 2017, 58% had been in temporary accom…

At the beginning of 2017, there were 19,700 households in temporary accommodation located outside their home borough, more than one in three of total households placed in temporary accommodation. This is 1,800 more households than were placed outside their borough at the same point in 2016 (a 10% increase in one year). 

The patterns across London are uneven, with eight boroughs placing more than 1,000 households in temporary accommodation outside of the borough. Newham had the highest number at 1,700. Newham also had the highest number of households in temporary accommodation overall as they also did in 2016). In addition to the local housing market factors discussed above, there has also been a ‘knockon’ effect of Inner London boroughs placing their homeless families in temporary accommodation in Newham, which the council said in 2015 ha…

After large changes in the tenure mix in the previous decades, the past five years have not seen significant changes in the proportion of Londoners living in each tenure.

Levels of private renting in this decade are the highest seen since the 1970s. In 2016, 880,000 or 27% of households lived in private rentals. This is still far below the proportion that were private renters in the 1960s (around 45%).

The rise in the share of households living in the private rented sector over recent decades was simultaneous to a fall in social renting over the 1980s and 1990s. In 2016, 740,000 households or 23% lived in this tenure. The peak for this tenure occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before Right to Buy was introduced. In 1981, 35% of all London households lived in social housing.

The proportion of households that own their home rose eve…

The average rent for a two-bedroom private rented house in London is £1,730 compared with £820 across England. Two-bedroom homes to rent in London at the bottom quarter of the market are £1,250 a month – more than twice the average for England at £500.

The differences between the capital and the rest of the country are less pronounced for social renters. For registered social landlord (housing association) tenants, the average rent on a two-bedroom home in London at £550 is £150 higher than in England as a whole. For tenants of local authorities, London is £110 a month more expensive at £470. Social rents for two-bedroom homes are less than a third the cost of private rents in London.

* In the month up to Dec 1st, 2016 (not seasonally adjusted). 

The growth in private rents over the past five years has also been considerably higher in Lond…

London has a higher rate of court-ordered home repossessions than the rest of England, with 74% more repossessions per 1,000 households in the capital than the rest of the country (1.04 per 1,000 in the rest of England, compared to 1.81 per 1,000 in London).

However, standing at 6,431 in 2019, the overall number of repossessions in London has fallen by more than 60% since its recent peak in 2015 (16,888). This fall has primarily been driven by the reduction in landlord accelerated repossessions - the route taken by private landlords to regain possession of a property after a Section 21 (a so called “no fault”) eviction. This type of repossession is now less than a third of the level it was five years ago. 

Repossessions for people with mortgages have almost disappeared in London over the past decade, falling from over 3,604 a year in 2009 …

This map shows how eviction rates for renting households differ across boroughs. Enfield had the highest eviction rate in 2015/16 (and 2014/15) of 30 evictions per 1,000 renting households.  Barking and Dagenham was the next highest with a rate of 29 while Camden had the lowest rate of 5 evictions (per 1,000 renting households). 

The highest eviction rates are mostly concentrated in Outer London: nine of the ten boroughs with the highest eviction rates are in Outer London.  Seven of the ten boroughs with the highest eviction rates in 2014/15 are still in the top ten in 2015/16. Waltham Forest, Barnet’s and Bexley’s eviction rates declined (by 3 evictions per 1,000 renting households for Waltham forest and Barnet, and 1 eviction per 1,000 renting households for Bexley), and they are no longer in the top ten this year.  Barking and Dagenham…

This shows how private rents vary by borough and how this compares with earnings. The bars show monthly rent levels* for a two-bedroom property and the line shows this as a percentage of gross full-time earnings in the borough. As this report is concerned with those at the bottom of the income distribution we look at the lower quartile (bottom 25%) for both earnings and rents. This is why the average rent is lower than the figure given in the Average rents indicator.

In 2015–16 in Inner London, the rent was £1,500 a month, while in Outer London it was £1,180. In England as a whole it was less than half as much as Outer London, and a third of the Inner London level, at £500 per month.

The highest monthly rent was £2,400 in Kensington & Chelsea. Westminster is the only other borough with monthly rents above £2,000, at £2,100. The lowest …

‘Affordable’ homes are available at sub-market costs to households whose needs are not met by the market.*  There were 21,500 affordable home completions in London in the three years to 2015/16. This represents 24% of all housing completions during that period. A similar number of affordable homes completed were in Inner (10,800) and Outer London (10,700).

This graph shows that in the three years to 2015/16, Tower Hamlets delivered the most affordable homes of any borough at 1,830 (29% of completed homes). Waltham Forest was the borough in which affordable homes were the largest proportion of new homes at 47%. However, this is because this borough completed relatively few market homes, rather than a high number of affordable homes. 

Bexley delivered the fewest affordable homes. The borough actually had a net loss of social rents as more w…

 In 2014/15, there were 250,000 households in London that were overcrowded by the ‘bedroom standard’ which assesses the number of bedrooms needed according to the size and composition of households. Of these overcrowded households, there were 50,000 households in owner-occupation and 100,000 households in each of the private rented sector and social rented sector. This represents 13% of the social renting households in London, 11% of private renting households and 3% of owner-occupiers.

Levels of overcrowding in London are more than twice as high as the rest of England for every tenure. In the rest of the country, the rates of overcrowding are 1% in owner-occupation, 4% in the private rented sector, and 5% in the social rented sector.

While rates of overcrowding in London are higher now than a decade ago, current levels of overcrowding in …

This graph looks at the changing picture of poverty in London. On average in the three years to 2015/16, 27% of people in London were in a household in poverty after housing costs (AHC). This is equivalent to around 2.3 million people. 21% of people were in households in AHC poverty in the rest of England.

On this after housing costs measure, the poverty rate in London has fallen slightly: down two percentage points from 29% in 2007/08. The number of people in poverty in London have been largely unchanged over the last six years, although this is in the context of a growing population. Between 2008–11 and 2013–16, the increase was less than 20,000 and not statistically significant.

The BHC measure includes housing benefits as income and does not deduct rent. In London, where housing costs are higher, housing benefits can make u…

This graph looks at the number of people in poverty in each housing tenure over time. In the three years to 2015–16, 960,000 private renters, 810,000 social renters, and 490,000 owner-occupiers were in poverty. As a proportion of the total for each group, this means 39% of private renters, 46% of social renters, and 12% of owner-occupiers were in poverty.* This was a remarkable shift in poverty tenure in London, given that the private rented sector’s poverty numbers were still the lowest of the three in 2007–10.

These three tenures have followed different trends in the last few years. In the last five years, there has been a negligible change in the number of social renters in poverty, an increase of 160,000 private renters in poverty, and a fall of 130,000 owner-occupiers in poverty.

There was a large increase in private…

This graph looks at which housing tenure children in poverty live in. Over the three years to 2015/16, there were around 300,000 children living in poverty in the private rented sector, and 290,000 living in poverty in the social rented sector. There were far fewer living in owner-occupation, at 70,000.

However, the numbers of children in poverty in each of these tenures have followed very different trajectories. The number of children in poverty in the social rented sector fell to 240,000 in 2009–12, but has since increased again. In contrast, there were fewer than 100,000 children in poverty in private rented accommodation in the late 1990s. Since 2004–07, this number has roughly tripled.

The number of children in poverty in owner-occupation has been falling in recent years, by around 40,000 since 2011–14.

Expressed as a proportion, over …

This graph looks at the 80:20 ratios for London and the rest of England, before and after housing costs. Inequality in London is higher after housing costs are accounted for. The 80:20 ratio is 3.7 after housing costs, but 2.7 before housing costs. It has also fallen less over the course of the decade after housing costs: down 0.2, compared with 0.4 before housing costs.

The increase in inequality in London once housing costs are accounted for is large compared with the rest of England. The ratio is 0.3 higher after housing costs in England at 2.6, compared with 1.0 higher in London. In this way, London’s high housing costs contribute to its higher levels of inequality. Part of the reason for this is that those with higher incomes are more likely to own their own home, which tends to cost less than renting.…

This graph shows the breakdown between the number of social and affordable rented homes delivered in each London borough. “Affordable rented housing” is defined in this graph as having rent which is 80% or below of market value. This is the definition of affordability which was used in the London Plan in 2017 and in the current draft London Plan. 

Social housing is distributed by the council’s allocation scheme, owned and managed by social landlords, and offers low rent which is designed to be genuinely affordable to people on low incomes. It is almost always more affordable for those on low income than “affordable rented housing” from a private landlord.

This graph shows that 8,100 social rented homes were delivered between 2013/14 and 2015/16, compared to 4,900 “affordable rented homes”. Greenwich delivered the most social rented ho…