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Addressing London’s housing crisis
How the London Housing Directors’ Group is improving conditions for the capital’s residents
GROWTH, REGENERATION & DEVELOPMENT
Joanne Drew
Strategic Director of Housing and Regeneration, London Borough of Enfield, and Co-Chair, London Housing Director
Jamie Carswell
Director of Housing & Safer Communities, Royal Borough of Greenwich, and Co-Chair, London Housing Director
Issue 72 | July 2024
Amid immense housing and homelessness pressures in the capital, housing officers across London’s boroughs are increasingly collaborating to take on these challenges and deliver better results for residents. As a network of senior housing professionals, the London Housing Directors’ Group (LHDG) has enabled the creation of shared services and support, research to inform successful lobbying, and promoted best practice to improve housing conditions.
We are a professional network, providing a collective voice for housing from across London’s 33 local authorities. Together, we manage 390,000 social rented homes, provide services to 410,000 leaseholders and deliver the boroughs’ statutory and strategic housing objectives across a range of issues, including homelessness, housing delivery and housing management.
London’s housing crisis
Housing pressures in London are the most acute in the country. Driven by the chronic and longstanding shortage of affordable housing in the capital, over the past two years in particular, housing insecurity has affected many more people, including those living in private rental accommodation and homeowners. We estimate one in 50 Londoners is homeless and living in temporary accommodation.
“We estimate one in 50 Londoners is homeless and living in temporary accommodation.”
households are on social housing waiting lists in London
Three quarters of Londoners now believe the cost of living to be an important issue facing the capital, closely followed by housing affordability (54%)
Two in five Londoners identified housing supply/not enough housing and homelessness and rough sleeping as a key issue affecting the capital, just ahead of London’s economy (37%)
The challenge for councils
A key challenge is the lack of affordable housing for people on low incomes. Recent analysis commissioned by LHDG shows that London boroughs face a black hole of £700 million in their social housing budgets over the next four years, despite the desperate need to improve housing conditions and build new homes in the capital. It’s putting extreme financial pressure on London boroughs and is having a huge impact on other services too – such as education, health, and social care.
“Recent analysis commissioned by LHDG shows that London boroughs face a black hole of £700 million in their social housing budgets over the next four years.”
Impact to date
With LHDG’s shared ambitions and combined resources, we’ve set up new services in London to help address some key challenges:
Setting the Standard (StS) was created to raise standards in the highest risk section of the nightly paid Temporary Accommodation market (B&B and studio properties) used by boroughs.
Housing Development Academy (HDA) was set up to deliver construction skills to council colleagues, to address a gap in the market to help to deliver more new homes.
Retrofit London is working to achieve substantial carbon reductions in London’s housing stock.
Priorities for 2024
We’ll continue to focus on London’s key housing challenges and ensure that the LHDG provides a strong politically neutral voice for council housing in London, regionally and nationally, and that we support collaboration, professional development and service improvements across the sector.
Our key areas of focus are to:
- Tackle London’s temporary accommodation crisis and end rough sleeping.
- Build more affordable homes in the capital, including unlocking regeneration opportunities.
- Improve London’s social housing.
Social housing is crucial to tackling London’s homelessness crisis – it’s a vital component of the capital’s social and economic success, and we should all want the sector to thrive.
