Income officers from councils and local authority-owned housing companies, asked how Covid-19 had affected their tenants’ finances, have reported increased use of foodbanks, increased fuel poverty, increased demand for money/debt advice services and increased demand for hardship funds.

Given the massive level of short-term support put in place by the government, the need for this extra help is alarming, says NFA Policy Director Chloe Fletcher.

The fear is that local authorities and their housing companies have no capacity, either in cash or housing stock, to cope with increased homeless at a time when 95,000 homeless households are already in temporary accommodation and facing a long wait for a permanent place to live. Recent cuts in central government funding for local authority hardship funds are also expected to hit struggling renters hard.

Chloe Fletcher said: “If the upheaval of the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that a healthy housing market needs a good supply of all kinds of tenure. That means not only more accessible home-ownership, but also sufficient quality social housing to offer secure and genuinely affordable homes for the lowest paid and most vulnerable.
“This survey demonstrates the fantastic job councils and local authority owned housing companies have done for their residents during this crisis, and how crucial their extra support has been to them. And, of course, that this support needs to continue.”

John Bibby, Managing Director of ARCH, added: “Now is the time for the government to address the failings in the housing market and, alongside measures to help those who can afford to buy, to build back better by investing in a new generation of council housing that we can all be proud of.