July 2nd, 2024

Why Britain is the worst on homelessness

The UK faces severe homelessness issues, with 1 in 200 households in emergency lodging. Rising due to housing unaffordability, poor conditions impact adults and children. Urgent action is needed to boost housing supply and affordability.

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Why Britain is the worst on homelessness

The UK holds the unfortunate title of being the world's worst in homelessness, with one in 200 households living in emergency lodging outside the formal housing sector. The main form of homelessness is people living in temporary accommodation due to an inability to afford housing. Conditions in these accommodations are often atrocious, leading to negative impacts on adults and children. The number of English households living in temporary accommodation has more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. This crisis is attributed to inadequate rates of housebuilding, a shrinking social housing sector, and the erosion of financial support for those unable to afford market rents. The UK's struggle with homelessness highlights the urgent need for increased housing supply and affordability measures to address this pressing issue.

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By @livueta - 5 months
By @znkynz - 5 months
The temporary accomodation looks like a brutal existence. Often a B&B room, with no cooking facilities. A recall a documentary looking at kids living in these spaces, who were often 'cooking' a tin of baked beans down the back of a radiator - that's all they had access to.
By @data_maan - 5 months
Britain is sliding down on all rankings and measures, and the fact that these people voted for Brexit to make "Britain great again" (which a sizeable portion of the people still support) just shows that for now they are also incapable of dragging them out of the mud.

Probably Britain will be like in a few decades what now are the third-world countries...

By @Affric - 5 months
Obviously FT is British but I think it can be hard to fathom just how grim Britain is. It’s properly cold. Doesn’t really get warm in summer. Of the developed nations on Earth the list of worse places to be homeless is short.
By @reaperman - 5 months
> The “build more houses” discourse can sometimes feel like the preserve of young professionals and policy wonks, distant from the daily experiences of those on the brink of destitution. This could not be further from the truth. The homelessness crisis is at its heart a crisis of housing supply and affordability, and on both scores Britain fares the worst.
By @JSDevOps - 5 months
Because when you have generations whose limited thinking is “invest in property,” that’s all they cling to, refusing to accept just how fucking wrong they were. Now they’re sitting on damp houses that are falling to bits, demanding top dollar and refusing to take a penny less because, guess what, “invest in property” is all they have left. No savings. No other assets. No thought of starting a business. They’re just waiting for that big payday in the sky.

So, the housing market is fucked. It’s so out of proportion, it’s unreal. It needs a reset so younger generations can actually afford to live where they want to—whether that’s for family ties, work prospects, or whatever. Now you’ve got self-identifying middle classes who are one month away from the street due to artificially inflated property prices and rising mortgage rates. Like someone said, Britain is failing on every metric at the moment. It’s not solely the government’s fault; people need to look closer to home, pardon the pun.

You’ve got wannabe property developers who can’t even afford their own homes but go around telling everyone to invest in property, parroting that nonsense everywhere they go, dreaming of the day they become property millionaires. They’re just deluded.