The UK’s most expensive borough to live in, the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea, plans to send some of its most vulnerable residents to live outside London because the soaring property market means it can no longer afford to house them.
The Conservative authority, where the average home costs £1.4m, will spend £10m buying properties outside the borough for people who have been made homeless. It is searching for 39 homes in outer London, the M25 corridor and the home counties suitable for temporary accommodation, used by people who often suffer physical or mental health problems and are left without a roof over their heads.
The policy has been fiercely criticised by housing activists, who say the use of temporary accommodation to house vulnerable tenants will isolate them from vital community support.
Nick Paget-Brown, the council leader, said: “In an ideal world we would like to buy properties in Kensington and Chelsea, but the numbers simply don’t stack up. We could only buy a handful of homes here. By looking further afield, we can purchase significantly more, making a huge difference to those on our waiting list.”
Neighbouring Westminster city council has spent £3.6m buying 25 homes in Thurrock, Essex, for temporary housing, bringing the number of Westminster-owned homes located outside London to about 100. The latest batch bought by the council in Grays, 25 miles east of central London, cost £183,000 each on average, compared to the almost £1m an average house in Westminster costs. The new strategy comes amid plans to tear down flats in Chelsea which the council currently uses for temporary accommodation. They are likely to be replaced in part by private apartments fetching up to £4m each, in a scheme that has been opposed by the comedian Eddie Izzard and the deputy Labour leadership candidate Tom Watson.
A spokesperson for Westminster city council said: “We do not rule out having to go further afield and will consider the M25 area and southern counties.”
Doaa Borie, 38, a single mother of two whose son has special educational needs, said: “It is unfair and it makes me angry.” Her family are facing eviction from temporary housing on the Sutton Estate, a social housing area in Chelsea that will be partly replaced by multi-million pound luxury apartments. “It seems like only rich people can lead normal lives. Sending people out of London is a very bad idea. This will damage children by pushing us away from the community.”
John Kent, the Labour leader of Thurrock council, said he had not been told about Westminster’s plans and demanded that the London authority pay the social care costs of residents it places in the homes.
In a robust letter sent in March, he told Westminster’s Conservative council leader, Philippa Roe: “Your current approach simply props up your failing housing system. It increases the burden on the public purse through ever growing housing benefit payments by pushing up rents and demand for housing outside London.”
Paul Dimoldenberg, until recently the leader of the Labour group at Westminster, also opposes the move. He said: “Westminster Conservatives are continuing to export the homeless to east London and Essex where they have no social connections or family support. They are using their financial wealth to take away homes from residents in Grays who want to buy or rent locally.”
Daniel Astaire, the Westminster cabinet member for housing and regeneration, defended the strategy as “a practical step to help people in housing need” and said housing is a London-wide issue that will not be solved by sticking rigidly to borough boundaries.
With the average cost of a home in Kensington and Chelsea the highest anywhere in the country, according to Land Registry data, the council expects to save significant sums by looking further afield. It is planning to pay no more than £450,000 per home. The strategy could leave workers in temporary housing facing long commutes if they want to keep their jobs. But the council said the two and three-bedroom homes would be chosen so they are within commuting distance of the borough, and in an area where the ethnicity of the population is similar to the different types of households who access temporary accommodation.
Roger Harding, the policy director at the housing charity Shelter, said: “This is yet another symptom of the capital’s drastic shortage of genuinely affordable homes, which is seeing homeless families uprooted and torn away from their local area on an unprecedented scale. Imagine the pain of losing your home and just wanting a little help until you get back on your feet. And instead finding yourself being forced to pack your bags for a new town and waving goodbye to schools, jobs, and everyone you know.
“If we don’t want to see parts of London becoming no-go zones for all but the very rich, then the only solution is for the mayor and the government to invest in building the genuinely affordable homes that we so desperately need.”