Crisis charity to become a landlord in attempt to rectify ‘catastrophic’ housing in UK | Housing

It will be the first time in its 60-year history that people become homeless and the housing crisis in England has reached a “catastrophic scenario”, homelessness charity Crisis said.

The charity’s chief executive, Matt Downie, said it was preparing to launch a fundraising appeal to buy its own housing stock as it now has access to social housing to help the homeless.

“We don’t want to do this, but if no one else will provide housing, we’ll do it ourselves,” he said.

“This was unimaginable for my predecessors 10, 30, 50 years ago, because people would expect both councils and housing associations to provide the stock needed for people on low incomes. It just doesn’t exist anymore.

“We wouldn’t be doing this if the wheels of the homelessness and housing system hadn’t come off.”

Research from Crisis, published on Monday, found that nearly 300,000 families and individuals across England are experiencing the worst forms of homelessness, including sleeping on the streets, in tents or slums, or being trapped in unsuitable temporary accommodation such as B&Bs and B&Bs.

The study, led by Heriot-Watt University, surveyed 299,100 people. Households in England experienced acute homelessness in 2024; This is up 21% since 2022 and 45% since 2012.

Homelessness among people discharged from hospitals, prisons and other institutions increased by 22 per cent last year, while rates of homelessness among people discharged from shelters in the UK increased by 37 per cent.

Downie said the country “has never seen homelessness numbers this bad in memory, but we don’t have better evidence of what we need to do about it.”

“No one needs to be convinced that we are in a disaster scenario,” he added. “When I started working in conditions of homelessness, the average age of death was [for a homeless male] It became 47. Now it’s down to 44. We started to see the first child cases on our streets. “This doesn’t seem to shock people enough.”

The charity has set up its own lettings agency to secure its clients access to private rented housing and is now about to start providing its own social housing with special support for those in high needs, starting in London and Newcastle.

“We will proudly continue to buy and provide our own homes, public housing, because that is the answer. We can’t get anywhere without housing,” he said.

“Our strategy is to reach at least a thousand homes in the first phase and we have Housing First tenancy support teams ready to support people in these two cities. But our aim is to move on to something even bigger so we can show that housing is the solution to homelessness.”

He said the charity, based in London’s Commercial Street, would follow in the footsteps of housing associations set up by Victorian philanthropists in the 1800s to help the homeless and alleviate poverty.

“Here we are about 200 meters from the first Peabody site, which was the birth of social housing in this country, and yet we are having to start over,” he said.

The charity is calling on the government to urgently deliver the homelessness strategy promised in Labour’s manifesto, which is due to be published by Christmas, and to increase housing benefit to reflect the true cost of private rents.

The government has committed £39bn to the social and affordable homes programme, with a target of building 180,000 new social homes over the next 10 years.

But new housing minister Steve Reed sparked a backlash last month when he cut London’s affordable housing targets from 35% to 20% in a bid to speed up housing projects. The crisis demands ministers give “cast iron guarantees” that social housing construction will happen on a large scale.

“It’s really worrying to see more and more people coming to the conclusion that money can be made by creating people and making them homeless,” Downie said. “The cost of temporary accommodation is astronomical but it is a real shame that so much of this money ends up in the hands of people who are actively exploiting the situation.

“We need a political leader who understands all this. The truth is that unless we fundamentally rethink it, we will continue to talk about a larger problem in the coming years.”