According to a report by the Demographia International Housing Affordability (DIHA), London is one of the most unaffordable places to live in the world, and was officially rated as “impossibly unaffordable”. This is as bad as you would thin the name suggests, and the average price of a home in the capital is up to nine times more than the average income. Figures like this truly highlight the disturbing depth of the housing crisis in the UK, and the desperate need for more affordable homes.

We have already seen research identifying the tragic state of the private sector, as homeless charity shelter revealed that for an NHS nurse, a one-bedroom flat is unaffordable in nearly half of England. Alarming headlines such as these are becoming woefully common, and are a grim indicator of the crash course we are set for unless a radical u-turn is made.

As more and more people are priced out of the private market, without the necessary upscale in new affordable housing, we will see more of the same increase in families being forced into temporary accommodation. The state of temporary accommodation in the UK has it’s own arsenal of dystopian headlines, none more so than the record being broke for the eighth year in the row for children living in temporary accommodation in England. We have also seen the eye-watering figures of how much temporary accommodation costs councils every year, and the drain it presents on other resources for local communities.

All of these factors intertwine into one machine. The climbing private sector prices are blockading more and more people from home ownership- with full time employment in more and more roles failing to provide realistic hope of owning a home. Without an adequate amount of social and affordable housing, these people are being corralled into temporary accommodation in steadily rising numbers, and present an ever escalating drain on public funding. Even more tragic than the economic consequences, we also have clear visibility of the human element- the harm to psychological and physical health that comes from unstable housing and well documented, and can have even worse consequences for young children.

The government has repeatedly claimed social housing is at the core of it’s policy, and so far has seemingly backed up these claims. We need to see the real impact of this commitment over the coming years, in order to avoid spiraling further into seemingly out of control crisis.