Written evidence submitted by The Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study (TH0005)
1. Introduction
1.1. Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, is a world-leading longitudinal survey of continuity and change in UK life. From an initial sample of around 40,000 households, the same people are invited to participate in annual surveys. Together with its predecessor, the British Household Panel Survey, the data now span 32 years. Understanding Society is based at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. It is an important part of CLOSER, a partnership of leading social and biomedical longitudinal population studies in the UK (www.closer.ac.uk).
1.2. Understanding Society is primarily funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, and receives funding or support from a number of government departments, devolved administrations and agencies. Anonymised data from the survey are made available to registered researchers from across academic, government, charities, think tanks and business to use in their own research.
1.3 Homeless people are a particularly vulnerable and difficult to count population. Understanding Society only conducts interviews with people who have an address. However, our data are used by a number of bodies to provide information on different aspects of homelessness – especially in its ‘hidden’ forms, such as sofa-surfing and overcrowding.
2. Summary
3. Housing shortage overview and potential consequences
3.1 There are many sources of information on the housing shortage and homelessness. The following is a brief overview from sources which have used Understanding Society as a data source.
3.2 Centre for Cities says more than four million homes are “missing from the national housing market as they were never built”. Susan J Smith, Honorary Professor of Social and Economic Geography at Cambridge, says “UK housebuilding peaked in the 1960s and it has never really recovered”.
3.3 Both the previous government and the current government committed building 300,000 new homes per year. However, a report for homelessness charity Crisis and the National Housing Federation says 340,000 homes are needed each year in England alone. Centre for Cities says that, if 300,000 houses were built every year, the housing deficit “would take at least half a century to fill. Tackling the problem sooner would require 442,000 homes per year over the next 25 years, [and] 654,000 per year over the next decade”.
3.4 The National Housing Federation says that if action is not taken, by 2045, the number of people experiencing homelessness could more than double, reaching 620,000. Social housing waiting lists would also grow, as would the number of children living in temporary accommodation.
4. Ethnic minority communities at greater risk
4.1 Hidden homelessness disproportionately affects people from minorities, with households headed by people from Black and minority ethnic communities almost five times more likely than White-headed households to live in overcrowded accommodation.
4.2 Pakistani- and Bangladeshi-led households fared worst in the concealed households category, with Indian and Black-led households not far behind.
4.3 Affordability problems are worse, often significantly, for Black and minoritised ethnic communities, putting them at greater risk of homelessness. These risks are also particularly high for Pakistani and Bangladeshi as well as Black-headed households.
4.4 Migrants are more likely to live in overcrowded housing, especially in London.
4.5 This suggested that planning reforms on their own will be inadequate to ensure fairness without greater local powers and targeted investment, given minority communities are geographically concentrated.
5. Other hidden homelessness
5.1 ‘Sofa surfing’ is projected to increase by 18% in 2024 – up 25,000 on 2022, and by 28% by 2041 – up 40,000 on 2022.
References
3.2 Samuel Watling, Anthony Breach, The housebuilding crisis, Centre for Cities, February 2023: https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/; Susan J Smith, How can we tackle the UK’s housing crisis?, Economics Observatory, April 2024: https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-can-we-tackle-the-uks-housing-crisis
3.3 Cassie Barton, Wendy Wilson, Felicia Rankl, Abbas Panjwani, Tackling the under-supply of housing in England, House of Commons Library, May 2023: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7671/; Glen Bramley, Housing supply requirements across Great Britain for low-income households and homeless people, Heriot-Watt University, April 2019: https://doi.org/10.17861/bramley.2019.04; Samuel Watling, Anthony Breach, The housebuilding crisis, Centre for Cities, February 2023: https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/
3.4 Nina Emmins, Rebecca Munro, Mark Pragnell, Vicky Clark, The housing crisis: what will happen if we don’t act?, National Housing Federation, September 2023: https://www.housing.org.uk/resources/the-housing-crisis-what-will-happen-if-we-dont-act/
4.1-4.3 Glen Bramley, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Jill McIntyre, Sarah Johnsen, Homelessness and Black and Minoritised Ethnic Communities in the UK: A Statistical Report on the State of the Nation, November 2022: https://www.hw.ac.uk/news-archive/2022/black-people-are-over-three-times-more.htm
4.4 Mariña Fernández-Reino, Carlos Vargas-Silva, Migrants and housing in the UK, The Migration Observatory, September 2022: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-and-housing-in-the-uk/
5. Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Glen Bramley, Lynne McMordie, Hal Pawson, Beth Watts-Cobbe, Gillian Young, The Homelessness Monitor: England 2023, Crisis, August 2023, p.96: https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/homelessness-knowledge-hub/homelessness-monitor/england/the-homelessness-monitor-england-2023/
November 2024