Is Wales' homeless crisis spiralling out of control?

Shelter Cymru have just published a shocking report that lays bare the housing crisis facing local councils in Wales.

The report says that demand for temporary accommodation in Wales has grown dramatically in recent years. In March 2021 there were 3,729 households in temporary accommodation, by March 2024, this had risen to 6,447 households. Currently more than 11,000 people are living in temporary accommodation in Wales, including almost 3,000 children:

Across Wales local authorities are struggling to cope with the impact of this level of demand, and many have shared with Shelter Cymru the challenges of finding suitable temporary accommodation to meet people’s needs. As part of our work to further understand the impact of rising temporary accommodation demand Shelter Cymru issued a Freedom of Information Request to all 22 Local Authorities in Wales in the summer of 2024. This report explores the results of these alongside publicly available information and shows that:

• The cost of temporary accommodation in Wales has more than doubled since 2021. The Wales-wide bill for temporary accommodation in 2020/2021 was over £41million. This has risen to over £99million in the last financial year, 2023/2024.

• The cost of temporary accommodation is increasing at almost double the rate that demand for temporary accommodation is rising. The number of households accessing temporary accommodation has increased by 75% in the period covered by this FOI request while the cost of temporary accommodation has grown by 140%.

• A central factor in these dramatically rising costs appears to be local authorities’ increased reliance on private sector provision to meet the needs of people in their area. Across Wales, over half of the people in temporary accommodation are living in B and Bs, hotels, holiday accommodation (such as static caravans) and private sector rental homes. In 11 of our 22 Local Authorities, more than two-thirds of people in temporary accommodation were in options provided by private sector businesses and individuals (Stats Wales, March 2024).

• Conversations with local authorities and people living in temporary accommodation show that these private sector options are routinely of higher cost and lower-quality than alternatives. A spokesperson from one local authority noted that hotel and B and B owners are “charging us more than they could charge tourists in the off-season and their hotels are full year-round housing people who would otherwise be homeless here. They know they’ve got us over a barrel.”

At the heart of these figures are people. People stuck in extended stays in hotels where they don’t have the cooking facilities to meet their family’s need. People waiting for adapted properties who are struggling to navigate unsuitable B and Bs. Families and children in noisy and unsettling environments that are damaging their mental and physical health.

Our current approach to temporary accommodation is dysfunctional. It is seeing large sums of public money being transferred to private businesses and individuals as local authorities struggle to meet the demands of our housing emergency. While 51% of our temporary accommodation placements are in private provision, conversations with local authorities suggest that the inflated costs of private sector options mean that considerably over half of the £99million spent on temporary accommodation last year went directly to private profits.

We need long-term solutions that ensure people have access to permanent homes to reduce the need for temporary accommodation. However, we know that this will take time, and that people are also suffering now, which is why we propose that long-term approaches be partnered with pragmatic steps in the medium term. This approach will help to retain public funds for public good and improve the experiences of people and families in temporary accommodation right now. If Welsh Government considered the recommendations in this report, it would enable local governments to take greater ownership of temporary accommodation provision – resulting in more suitable and better quality options for people who need it while bringing down the cost. 

We cannot continue to rely on privately owned temporary accommodation to fill the gap left by a long-term failure to deliver the homes we need. Doing so not only fails to ensure people are provided with the level of accommodation they deserve but also provides some organisations the opportunity to capitalise on our homelessness crisis.

In summary we need more social housing, but in the short term we need good quality, publicly owned temporary accommodation to cut costs and to properly support families and individuals. How the Welsh Government reacts to this report will be critical.