Did you know that NHG is the largest housing association provider of temporary housing in London?
Temporary housing offers a home to households who do not have a permanent place to stay. These households would either be homeless or living in bed and breakfast/hostel type accommodation.
Within London, more than 56,000 households were in temporary accommodation in 2019 alone, which is an increase of 30 per cent compared with five years ago.
NHG currently offers over 3,000 temporary housing properties. It does so by partnering with boroughs and local authorities who then nominate households. The bulk of our temporary housing portfolio are houses leased to us by private landlords who would otherwise be letting these properties on the private market. By leasing to us, these landlords are fulfilling a social purpose.
Covid-19 has increased the importance of and need for temporary housing, to ensure more families can be given a home. Since lockdown began in March 2020, we have housed over 150 new households, allowing them to finally have their own space.
Households within temporary housing all have a dedicated housing officer. During the last few months, over 4,000 calls have been made by housing officers to check in with these households to see how they are managing and whether we can offer any support. This has included arranging for these households to receive food vouchers, working with those less IT-enabled to request government food boxes, and on some occasions buying and delivering food to our most vulnerable tenants.
As NHG does not own the majority of our temporary housing properties, this does mean that households may have to be rehoused at the end of the lease. For this reason, we ensure we work closely with our local authority partners as they will be responsible for finding households their new home.
While temporary housing will not be a person’s forever home, it provides an important stepping stone for the tenant and their family for however long that may be.