Almost 3,500 Hackney households are in temporary accommodation – as councils warn of ‘unsustainable’ homelessness levels

Hackney’s finance chief said there is ‘simply not enough’ affordable housing

Nearly 3,500 households are in temporary accommodation in Hackney, the council has confirmed – just a week after a collective of London authorities warned the Treasury about “unsustainable” levels of homelessness.

In January, Hackney Council said “over 3,000” families had begun the year living in hostels, bed and breakfasts or temporary accommodation.

New figures shared with the Citizen put the number at 3,449.

Last week, London Councils, a collective of the capital’s 32 boroughs and the City of London corporation, warned the government that the housing crisis spelled serious danger for budgets amid a funding shortfall of £700 million.

The cross-party group’s new chair, Cllr Clair Holland, said the current outlook was “bleak” and that “at a time when we need to invest in social housing and support homeless Londoners, boroughs are facing an unrelenting squeeze on our resources”.

The group also argued that a failing local government sector would only worsen broader economic and fiscal challenges.

For Hackney, budget pressures for critical services such as tackling homelessness has driven a forecasted overspend of £21m.

The borough’s cabinet member for finance, insourcing and customer service, Cllr Robert Chapman, agreed that the situation was “unsustainable”.

He said: “All councils are facing enormous financial challenges, which in London is compounded by a housing crisis, where there simply aren’t the number of affordable homes needed for local people.

“It’s often left to councils to foot the bill to ensure homeless families and others in priority need have a roof over their heads, but this accommodation can be basic and it means that public money ends up in the hands of private landlords.”

The Town Hall’s budget for supporting homeless households in 2024/25 is £23m.

The majority of this goes towards providing temporary accommodation, which will see a predicted overspend of £7.4m.

In July, the Citizen revealed four people had died in temporary accommodation in Hackney in the past year.

A council officer at the time admitted there were “huge amounts of people that we cannot provide appropriate accommodation for”.

The 2021 census revealed there were 106,100 households in the borough.

Taking this as the baseline, the latest data suggests around one in 30 of these are living in temporary accommodation.