The crisis isn’t getting better — and for housing it’s getting worse

Our data comes from the millions of people we help every year — giving us unique frontline insights into the cost-of-living crisis and the challenges people are facing.
Our latest insights tell us that the crisis isn’t getting better — and for housing, it’s getting worse.
The Government’s policies have made an impact to the number of people we’ve helped every day with crisis support (e.g. food bank referrals and emergency charitable support). But the impact has been short-lived, as these numbers soon rebounded.
We can already see that the effects of the latest Cost of Living payments in late April/May are wearing off. This is a worrying trend as we head towards the colder months. The next round of Cost of Living payments, due this Autumn, can’t come soon enough.
It’s a similar story for the numbers of people we’re helping who can’t afford to top up their prepayment meter. This is an urgent situation, as if someone can’t top it up they will be left without gas and electricity. No heat, no hot water, no power, nothing.
Looking at our monthly data trends, we can see that the numbers have fallen from their peak last winter. It’s likely that the combination of the Cost of Living payments, benefit uprating and the minimum wage increase, alongside stronger protections against vulnerable customers being forced onto prepayment meters, have all helped.
But our August numbers are still worryingly high. We’re seeing 14% more people than last August and 466% more than August 2021 — and they’ve gone up significantly for the first time since March.
Without further Government support, this winter could be as bad, if not worse, for energy customers. There are no plans for a repeat of last winter’s direct support on energy bills via the Energy Bill Support Scheme (EBSS), meaning that the average household will actually pay roughly the same, or even more, for their energy this winter than the last. That’s why we’ve called for further targeted support on energy bills this winter, as well as a long-term solution to make energy bills affordable through a social tariff.
Our data shows that the cost-of-living crisis isn’t getting better. In fact, things are heading in the wrong direction again.
And when we look at our housing data, the picture gets even worse.
The number of people we’ve been helping with a homelessness issue has kept rising since the pandemic — when the Government took temporary action to move rough sleepers into accommodation and ban evictions — and reached record levels in August.
A key driver of this trend is the rising number of private renters needing help with a Section 21 or ‘no fault’ eviction notice from their landlord. This issue is even more severe for women, single parents and people who are racially minoritised.
We know that many landlords have responded to rising mortgage payments by raising the rent to levels their tenants can’t afford, which often leads to them handing their tenant a Section 21 eviction.
The problem of rising rents is made worse by the freeze in the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates, which set the level of housing support private renters can get from their benefits. LHA rates have been frozen in cash terms since April 2020, while rents have shot up.
That means there’s a growing gap between how much benefit support a private renter can get with their housing payments and the level of their rent. Jason’s story highlights this.
The Government clearly needs to immediately unfreeze and restore LHA rates to the 30th percentile of local rents, which will make housing support from benefits more closely reflect the cost of renting privately. But, this won’t solve the problem of (a lack of) affordable housing on its own.
There just aren’t enough homes that people can afford, either in the private rented sector, in social housing or to buy. And our data shows that, alongside making energy bills and essential consumer services affordable, you can’t fix the cost-of-living crisis without a long-term solution on housing.
This is a huge and complex task. We won’t have all the answers — and there are plenty of housing experts and organisations who have good ideas on this. But what’s clear is that a long-term solution needs to be found, and quickly.