Waltham Forest council tenants face an average wait of 70 years to be housed, and other English councils could soon face the same dilemma, it was warned this week.
Already strained waiting lists will face further pressure under new priority categories for housing in the Homelessness Act that will be introduced in July.

Waltham Forest head of housing Jim Wintour came up with the 70-year wait estimation. He divided the number of households on its waiting list by the number of properties the council lets out on average each year.

Wintour admitted the mathematics was "crude", but he claimed that the situation was true for "a lot of London boroughs".

"The estimation assumes that nobody new will come onto the waiting list," Wintour said. "The situation is slowly getting worse because provision of social housing is going down as a result of government policy."

He said the capital had lost around 60,000 affordable homes over the last decade, and the Homelessness Act would add more pressure through new categories viewed as priority housing cases.

A spokesman for Richmond upon Thames council, said: "We're expecting a marked increase in the number of homeless cases amongst the 16 - 17 age group."

Chartered Institute of Housing policy director John Perry said the act "won't help the situation".

"Waltham Forest is a London borough where housing demand is at its highest but, even so, this situation will be typical of many boroughs and things will get worse before they get better," he added.

Source

Housing Today