---

Affordable Housing

I have indeed read the book, which provides an excellent analysis and should be required reading. Although, sadly, individuals sometimes bear the brunt of the grievances of those whose needs are not met, the failings of the system are to blame. I am concerned about recent evidence of the difficulty of obtaining temporary accommodation to meet the needs of homeless families in my borough. Placements in such accommodation are often responsible for the community tensions that I have described. As I have already mentioned briefly to my hon. Friend the Minister, I have seen an increasing number of families in temporary accommodation lose homes—either temporary settled homes or private rented accommodation—in my borough. They are then moved, sometimes after 12 or 15 years’ residence, to temporary accommodation in Dagenham, Barking or other parts of east London because my borough has been unable to find them the temporary accommodation that they need. What is particularly galling is that on a number of estates in my area up to half the council accommodation has been sold through the right to buy, and is now in the hands of individuals and property companies buying to let. That engenders endless frustration. We frequently find ourselves re-renting flats that were available for social accommodation as temporary accommodation at £400, £430 and £450 per week, while next to them stand former council flats that could have been rented for £90 a week. The housing problem is not the only consequence: housing benefit expenditure on temporary accommodation has risen from £82 million a year in 1997 to £1.2 billion today. We are pouring public money into temporary accommodation, often via the right-to-buy sector, in order to keep people in accommodation much of which is still sub-standard. My recent experience confirms that those families are not settled in long-term temporary accommodation, but are being moved from pillar to post. They are being moved from a borough that has been their settled home. We are pulling their children out of school, and taking them to the boroughs where community tension is strongest. That makes no sense as housing policy or as social policy, and it makes no financial sense. We must do something radical to stop it.