770 children living in temporary accommodation in Salford – “This is a homelessness crisis”

Co-author – Edward Hayton

Latest stats reveal that there are 770 children living in temporary accommodation in Salford as another Salford MP declares “homelessness crisis”.

The latest stats from the Office of National Statistics from July- September 2023 also state that 722 households in Salford are facing temporary accommodation.

There were 4,737 households on Salford council’s housing waiting list in November, with only 965 homes advertised as being available throughout the whole of 2023 by local housing providers. The number of households placed in temporary accommodation while they await a permanent offer reached 666 – including 912 children – on January 3.

Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, says that some people ‘will be put up in B&Bs and hostels, often with one family in a single room, sharing bathrooms and kitchens with other residents’.

Growing numbers of homeless people in Salford are at risk of sleeping rough with 118 people currently on the waiting list for the city’s ‘A Bed Every Night’ scheme (ABEN).

One in 71 people in Manchester are without a permanent home – one of the highest rates in England outside of London.

Salford Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey has said that “continuing no-fault evictions has contributed to a homelessness crisis” in the city.

This comes after her push for an answer on the Government Renters Reform Bill since 2023, when she wrote a letter to current secretary of state for levelling up, Michael Gove, after there had not been any progress on the bill for the last four months in September in order to fight Salford no-fault evictions problem.

She told the Commons: “Private market rents are outstripping incomes and local housing allowance rates at a frighteningly exponential rate, and because there are no affordable homes to go to once you’re evicted from a property, homelessness levels are now at acute levels in Salford”.

A “no-fault” or Section 21 eviction allows landlords eject tenants to without a reason. Landlords can do this at the end of a fixed-term tenancy agreement, or during a tenancy with no fixed end date.

Legislation to ban Section 21 evictions has already made it to the House of Commons. If passed the Renter’s Reform Bill will ban Section 21 no-fault evictions. The bill has reached report stage in the Commons but no date has been set for MPs to consider any further amendments.

Long-Bailey said: “This isn’t just a housing crisis now, this is a homelessness crisis in Salford so when is the Government going to bring back the Renters Reform Bill with robust amendments to finally ban section 21 evictions?”