Homelessness falls, or is it going up?

Every three months, the government reveals how many people in England are classed as homeless. Publication of the quarterly statistics is largely ignored by the media, which is generally only interested in how much houses cost rather than how many people can't afford to buy, or rent, one.

The latest figures, for the period to December 2010, make slightly confused reading. On one hand, the number of households living in temporary accommodation fell to 48,010 and is 10% lower than during the same period in 2009

At the same time, local authorities are dealing with more cases of homelessness and, in nearly half of them, accepting they must do something about it. Just over 26,000 households made applications to local authorities between October and December - 42% of which were accepted as priority cases where the council must provide assistance. The total number of applications was up 23% on the corresponding quarter in 2009.

The number of homelessness cases where local authorities are under a legal duty to provide assistance had been declining since 2003, before starting to rise early last year. The government says it has now stabilised at about 11,300 cases per quarter, but it is too early to say whether the number will rise again, or start falling.

All of which begs the question, has the credit crunch and recession resulted in more homelessness or not? Given that the economic crisis was largely caused by reckless bank lending for mortgages and had a major knock-on effect on housing, one might easily expect the situation to be worse than it is.

According to the government figures, most people become homeless because of breakdowns in family relationships, with just 3% of current cases caused by mortgage arrears. During the recession of the early 1990s, the number of cases involving households with mortgage problems peaked at 12%.

More worrying at present is what happens to people requiring temporary housing. Under Labour, the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for families with children fell dramatically. Yet during the final quarter of last year, 660 families with children were in B&B compared with 400 at the end of 2009.

While this is just 2% of the 36,230 families with children in all types of temporary accommodation, it is a worrying trend that needs to be reversed immediately to avoid the problem of homelessness becoming far more visible to society as a whole.