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From the archive - more than 50,000 teenagers in temporary accommodation
Inside Housing looks back at what was happening in the sector this week 10, 20 and 30 years ago
30 years ago
More than 50,000 teenagers aged 16 to 19 were living in temporary housing, Inside Housing reported.
Changes to the benefit system meant that people in B&Bs were paid two weeks in arrears, which had led to a “sudden and dramatic surge in the crisis” of homeless teenagers, according to a report by homelessness charity Centrepoint.
Nick Hardwick, chief executive of Centrepoint, said: “We don’t believe this is what the [government] intended when they introduced the April changes and we hope that they will rectify the situation.”
The charity was calling for young homeless people to be treated as vulnerable by councils, and be made eligible for housing, after its night shelter in Soho saw the number of teenagers seeking help rise 35%.
Of the young people at the hostel, nearly a quarter had been in care.
20 years ago
A fight was underway in Tony Blair’s Labour government over whether to keep a manifesto pledge to ringfence the receipts from the sale of council houses for repairs.
Labour MPs were in a “rearguard action” against, after speculation by Treasury sources that the money could be redirected for other uses.
The Local Government Association was also calling for all capital funds to be put in a “single pot”, without special treatment for housing. But the Chartered Institute of Housing said that would be “disastrous”.
In response, Labour MPs launched a parliamentary Labour housing group and an early day motion calling for the release of £4bn in capital receipts.
Labour MP Kerry Pollard said: “Receipts should be ringfenced and put back into repairs. The start of a civilised society is bricks and mortar.”
Inside Housing’s editor Julian Dobson said: “It’s a little disturbing, to put it mildly, that some ministers now appear to see capital receipts as a slush fund for other spending departments.”
He added: “There are few signs that Treasury ministers have accepted the urgency of the case.”
Picture: Chris McAndrew
10 years ago
Nearly three-quarters of the public supported an idea by the housing minister that tenants should risk losing their home if they shunned help to find work.
The result came from an Ipsos Mori poll, with its chair Ben Page saying: “Caroline Flint’s more aggressive stance on persuading jobless social tenants into work seems to have considerable public support and Labour is viewed as the party with the best policies on housing.”
Fifty-nine per cent of the survey respondents said social tenants should be free to stay in their homes for as long as they wanted, seemingly a contradiction.
Labour MP Karen Buck (above) said the results showed there was a “fundamentally wrong public perception about the work-shy”.
