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  • The Big Issue

    THE DISPATCH

    Jul 18, 2022 8 minutes

    HOUSING

    At least 30,000 people have waited 10 years for social housing

    The Big Issue can reveal that across England, over 30,000 people have been on a social housing waiting list for 10 years or more. In a stark illustration of the UK’s growing housing crisis, data shows that waits of two years or longer are now commonplace, while one in five people have waited 10 years or more for a home in at least three areas.

    The Big Issue sent Freedom of Information requests to the 10 councils in England with the highest demand for council homes as of 2021 – Liverpool, Wakefield, Brent, Newham, Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Lambeth.

    Nine out of 10 authorities responded, with Wakefield Council rejecting the request saying its social housing stock was transferred to a housing association in 2005. Birmingham Council only supplied figures dating from 2017 onwards. The data showed the longest wait for a social home was more than 50 years in Newham, Sheffield and Leeds. One person in Sheffield has been on the waiting list for 62 years.

    Most councils said people on the waiting list don’t have to bid for a home, and that these decades-long “waits” are likely people who are not actively searching for somewhere to live. In all nine council areas, at least 20 per cent of people on the waiting

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