A Never-Ending Demand and a Limited Supply

This was the picture which accompanied a Newham Recorder article about the alarming number of housing applications received by Newham Council. The intention is obvious, to create the impression that these applicants and there were 500 new applicants in January, are currently living on the streets.

They are not.

Currently (2021 figures) there are a little over 2000 people living on the streets on any single night across the UK.

This is a serious number, but nothing compared to the 20,000 plus on Newham’s housing list alone. If they wanted to do something about it, you would think that several local boroughs could get together to plan a joint response, but that would require doing something rather than whinging. Across east London, the total number of regular street sleepers is unlikely to number more than a few hundred.

The article notes a comment from Cllr Mohammed, “I think it’s unprecedented the amount of applications  we’re getting, we’ve currently got 5,858 residents in temporary accommodation [when] our figures for 2021/22 were 4,424”.

The problem is, he says, “a supply issue”. Nice quote from one of Newham Council’s plethora of private landlords!

Mayor Fiaz appears to see him as part of the problem. “Ms Fiaz told cabinet members: “I think there’s something profoundly concerning and unsustainable in a borough where 68pc of our resident population live in the private rented sector – where the majority of those landlords that own these properties don’t have a vested interest in Newham beyond generating income because they don’t live in the borough.” That must have been a bit embarrassing.

She is probably wrong as well. On around 117,0000 properties in the borough, the council’s own website says, “87,392 private sector”. This is indeed around 60%, but it “includes owner occupied properties and those rented from private landlords”. It is a reasonable assumption that roughly half of this figure is accounted for by private homeowners, living in their own property.

The problem, in short, is that Newham doesn’t have enough empty properties for all of those who want one. Apparently, there are “soaring rents and mass evictions.” So Cllr Mohammed might have to become a little more creative in the way in which he seeks to address this problem. (If you have read the article on the Budget Working Party report, you will see the strains that this situation is putting on the budget.)

But that is only a problem if the only solution is for Newham to give subsidised housing to everyone that wants it. That seems to be the assumption of both Mayor Fiaz and Cllr Mohammed.

They need to begin to think more creatively rather than just react to everyone who comes asking. This is in large part a problem of their own creation. With considerable fanfare, they changed housing policy from a system based on “fairness”, (time on the list) to one based on “need”. They have created both an expectation on the part of applicants and a situation in which supply can never match demand. And now they complain about it.