‘Just can’t compete’: Council bosses criticise bidding war for housing after being ‘gazumped’ by the Home Office

Hackney Town Hall

Bidders with deep pockets are beating Town Hall bosses to much-needed homes to give residents a temporary roof over their heads, politicians have heard.

Hackney Council is facing the challenge of rising prices and a shortage of suitable rental homes it can use, with more than 3,700 children living in temporary accommodation.

Hackney has the fourth highest number of homeless people across London’s 33 boroughs, and just over half of them are children.

The housing shortage means some residents are placed as far afield as Wellingborough and Peterborough.

The council said the only family-sized homes available are in Peterborough, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Derby, and warned that they will be “even further away” in the coming months.

Demand from single people is also increasing.

Recently, 180 private landlords have given the council notice to quit, which means it has to find alternative homes for residents in need.

Finance director Ian Williams said the authority is competing with the Home Office for temporary housing stock.

He explained that the council “just can’t compete with the price they are prepared to pay”.

He said the council was hoping to sign off “a not insignificant deal”, but “we were not just gazumped, we were gazumped squared to the power of three”.

Williams added: “We are straining every sinew to provide proactive solutions.”

He told the Living in Hackney scrutiny commission this week that London’s finance directors and housing bosses recently met with the government to stress their problems in getting “genuinely affordable housing”.

Rob Miller, the council’s strategic director of customer and workplace, said: “We are seeing extreme competition. Residents get very little time to make choices, and it puts people in challenging and vulnerable positions under pressure.”

He said one property was snapped up by another client as the housing team were having a conversation with a resident about their options.

Councillors from the commission visited residents in a range of temporary homes and hostels in Hackney.

Several people told them they had been living there for several years.

One woman who spent three years in a temporary home with her child said the council sometimes asked her to attend meetings at “very short notice, which got me into trouble with work, but I had to go or I would be intentionally homeless”.

She said she was sent letters to view homes outside London and sometimes got home to find correspondence about viewings that were set to take place that same day.

Talking to residents at hostels prompted Cllr Penny Wrout (Lab, Victoria) to ask for a review of the rules about visitors.

She spoke of cases where she had to intervene, as parents with young children were not even allowed a babysitter in their temporary accommodation.

She said: “That’s a huge social impact for some people. The rules are designed for a different era.”

Cllr Wrout added: “Some children are spending their entire childhood in temporary accommodation. These are their homes.

“We need to offer some of the rights and social benefits our tenants have. It’s not fair, especially for children.”

She suggested some flexibility and pointed out rules that are appropriate for men just out of prison might not be so for families.

Cllr Sade Etti, the mayoral adviser for housing needs and homelessness, said some residents are vulnerable and may have fled domestic abuse or have poor mental health.

She said specific needs can be discussed with hostel managers but did not rule out a review.