Nearly £100m spent on temporary accommodation for homeless in Wales
Martin Shipton
Almost £100m was spent by local councils across Wales last year as they grappled with skyrocketing costs needed to house homeless people and families in temporary accommodation.
New figures from Shelter Cymru show that the amount spent in 2023-24 was more than double what it was just three years before.
In 2020-21, the total cost in Wales was £41,164,170.50, In 2021-22 it rose to £54,483,758.69, climbing further to £71,377,719.29 in 2022-23. By 2023-24 it had risen to £99,011,630.82.
With more than 11,000 people now trapped in temporary accommodation, including almost 3,000 children, this dramatic increase in costs can in part be attributed to the increasing scale of the housing emergency Wales faces. However, Shelter Cymru’s research also identified that costs of temporary accommodation are rising twice as fast as demand for temporary accommodation is increasing.
Private sector
This suggests that rising costs are also driven by an increased reliance on the private sector to provide accommodation for homeless families and individuals. In some areas, almost 100% of temporary accommodation is being provided by the private sector. And across Wales more than 50% of households in temporary accommodation are living in such places.
Practically, argues Shelter, this means people stuck in hotels and B&Bs that aren’t suitable for their needs. It means people living for extended periods in caravan parks and in holiday accommodation – often far from schools or support networks.
And it means councils paying private business large sums of money for often unsuitable and inadequate places. Sadly, says Shelter, this situation offers only a snapshot into the wider housing emergency we face – with the rising cost of temporary accommodation just one example of the impact of a decades long-failure to provide the homes people need.
Impact
Shelter Cymru says it also sees the impact of this failure through the advice services it provides to people across Wales. In 2023/24, the charity provided advice to almost 12,000 households – 1 in every 113 families in Wales. In 88% of cases it was able to help avert homelessness, and in 59% of cases, it was able to keep people in their own homes, reducing the pressure on local authorities to provide temporary accommodation.
Shelter says it knows the demand for its services is greater than its capacity to meet it. And that for those facing homelessness its advice can be the difference between a Christmas at home rather than in temporary accommodation.
Ruth Power, CEO of Shelter Cymru, said: “Wales is in the midst of a housing emergency. An emergency that sees thousands of people and families trapped in inadequate temporary accommodation that is also putting increasing pressure on local authority finances. Something has to change. And in the long term we know that there is no solution that doesn’t include an increase in the number of social homes in Wales. “However, in the immediate future we also need to ensure that advice and support is available to all those who are at risk of homelessness.
“Shelter Cymru has a vital role to play here, and that’s why we are asking for two things this Christmas. Firstly, for the Welsh Government to increase the prioritisation of, and investment in, ending the housing emergency. And secondly, for those who can, to donate to our Winter Appeal: by providing specialist advice and support to people at risk of losing their home, we can stop homelessness before it starts.”
Temporary accommodation
As an illustration of the kind of case where Shelter can make a difference, Ms Power cited the example of a single mother of two who is stuck in temporary accommodation this Christmas.
“Alice [not her real name] and her two sons were initially housed in a B&B with single people with complex needs,” said Ms Power. “Alice and her children felt unsafe as people were taking drugs, drinking heavily and fighting in the B&B. Alice has had to give up her job since becoming homeless, as where the family was placed was too far from her work for her to continue to manage her shifts and childcare.”
Alicd said: “The B&B has a bad reputation. People came and went at all hours, it was noisy, it was scary. And I was there with the kids just feeling really vulnerable. All I want is somewhere permanent so I can get my life back to normal, so I can get a job again. But it’s just the waiting. It’s been years. We’re not able to make plans. We’re stuck here. You can’t think about planning your future. You don’t know where you’ll be living next week or next month.”
Shelter Cymru has advocated for the family and they are now in a self-contained unit with a kitchen and private bathroom while they wait for a social home. The charity will continue to work with Alice and her family until they are in a safe and stable home.
Ms Power said: “Stories like that of Alice and her family highlight the importance of access to expert advice. Advice that can both help improve the immediate situations people face and that can help find the right long-term solutions.”
Freedom of Information request
Data on the cost of temporary accommodation is based on Freedom of Information requests submitted by Shelter Cymru to all local authorities in Wales.
This Christmas Shelter Cymru is asking people to Give the Gift of Home by donating to support its work: For every £1 donated to Shelter Cymru, 89p goes directly to helping people in Wales and 11p is used to fundraise the next £1.
Total spend on temporary accommodation by local authority in 2023-24
Blaenau Gwent: £983,600.00
Bridgend: £5,092,919.00
Caerphilly: £5,904,646.00
Cardiff: £32,423,647.00
Carmarthenshire: £2,881,774.00
Ceredigion: £704,780.00
Conwy: £4,358,626.00
Denbighshire: £6,274,907.00
Flintshire: £6,779,000.00
Isle of Anglesey: £521,000.00
Merthyr Tydfil: £2,671,835.00
Monmouthshire: £3,838,179.86
Neath Port Talbot: £4,307,802.00
Newport: £3,282,691.00
Pembrokeshire: £2,787,700.00
Powys: £3,201,186.88
Rhondda Cynon Taf: £1,008,601.00
Swansea: £1,919,862.00
Torfaen: £1,188,097.17
Vale of Glamorgan: £754,738.91
Wrexham: £2,755,081.00
Total for Wales: £99,011,630.82
Donations can be made to Shelter Cymru here.
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How many Teepee, Yurt and Shepherd Hut towns could have been built for that, I wonder…
No urgency on housing. For those on waiting lists the wait gets longer and will get even longer once the lasting effect of the “liberation” of Syria sinks in. In towns and cities of Wales there are loads of empties waiting to be repurposed. If government wants to blow cash then go do deals with owners and refurb properties in return for a fixed term free issue lease to provide safe accommodation. Or think bigger and divert some of the cash from Milliband’s wind turbine/net zero extravaganza or the M.O.D’s big spend on defence to fund some capex on compulsory… Read more »
The Three Little Pigs made a better fist of it…
that’s just propaganda against straw bale and timber frame construction by Big Brick
.. especially as a lot of the brick now on the market is a very crumbly product anyway
Point of fact.
The current wind turbine and solar panel farms are funded with private money.
Milliband just gives the OK for private funded development.
That same UK regime takes the taxation and rents as they still have ownership of the crown assets which should be Cymru property as it is in Cymru.
If what you say is true then Milliband won’t need that £28billion budget and it can be freed up for other purposes, like those mentioned above.
Solar panels have just shown up a design fault, they can have their skirts lifted and fly away…UFOs reported over Ynys Mon…
There are Sterling Board Towns going up all around us, haven’t you noticed…
The figure for Cardiff is staggering, their population is about 10% of the country but their spend on temporary housing is 30%. They may have big benefit estates like Ely, St Mellons, Llanrumney etc, but the figures indicate a massive proportion of claimants are not even from the city.
2023/24 local authorities built themselves a grand total of 65 dwellings. 18 local authorities built zero new council houses.There needs to be more urgency to identify small areas of land, owned by the councils, suitable for some housing and borrow the money (the property is an asset) to get on with the job.
Same with homes for children in care, stop throwing money at a private sector largely providing an unsuitable product.
People now dying on hospital waiting lists are higher priority than people demanding free council houses. We lack the surgeons and doctors that are disqualified from public housing and their private sector housing provision is being destroyed by the politics of envy. So they go elsewhere and our hard working people die before their time.
Politics will worsen the economic mess in this country, so forget about plans for more Ely’s and Townhill’s. Even if we could afford them we’d then have to find billions to police the criminality and pay for all the benefit fraud that comes with them.
The rent pays back the loans, it costs taxpayers nothing.
Having briefly worked in this field, I can confirm that believing public sector housing pays for itself is as delusional as believing those who’ve had the £32million for temporary housing in Cardiff recently are going to pay it back.
Social housing is an investment for tenants and the council. The tenants get an affordable, secure home while the council, once the initial building costs are paid off, bank the future rents to spend on building more social homes. Thats how it should work,
That’s how it SHOULD work, but not how it DOES work. Politics will just allocate the housing to our huge ‘something for nothing’ society, many only active in benefit fraud and criminality and then riot when law and order tries to step in.