New Forest's social housing being 're-purposed' for spiralling numbers of homeless families

THE New Forest's social housing stock is having to be adapted to house the rising number of families finding themselves homeless, a district council meeting heard.

There are now more than 1,500 applicants on the council's waiting list, the Conservative cabinet member for housing Cllr Edward Heron revealed, with family homelessness on the rise.

He was responding to a question by Liberal Democrat Cllr Alex Wade about how many families had complained about the suitability of housing they had been placed in by the council.

Cllr Heron conceded that finding adequate accommodation was challenging, stating that of the 1,566 applicants on the waiting list, 576 were single.

He went on: "There are concerns about the suitability of our stock because, generally, looking back over recent years the bulk of our requirements for temporary accommodation have been around that for single persons.

"But what we are seeing is an increase in the number of families presenting – we are reacting to that, though.

"For example, our own temporary accommodation in Ringwood is being re-purposed to make it suitable for families."

The meeting heard there were currently 38 households in emergency accommodation across the district.

Cllr Heron continued: "We have to provide housing for those who are most in need but it's challenging within this district.

"We are working hard to provide more housing, though, through buy-back and our ability to buy from new-build developments."

As reported in the A&T, NFDC will plough a further £1.3m into tackling a homelessness crisis in the district which has seen a big rise in the number of people needing help.

In addition, two temporary posts will be created costing £92,000 per year.

In January, there were just three families in emergency accommodation but, according to NFDC, since the beginning of summer this had levelled out to around 40 each month.

The escalation has been put down to private tenancies coming to an end because landlords were selling up or re-letting properties, or because tenants had been evicted for falling behind with rents.

To exacerbate matters, the number of homelessness cases each officer was dealing with was far too high, meaning they were unable to dedicate the time needed.