Housing market

The housing crisis is turning into a homelessness crisis

Local councils are turning to hotels and B&Bs to house people

71,000 people in the UK are living in unstable temporary accommodation, and that figure is set to rise to 100,000 in three years time.

What it means: According to the housing charity Crisis, the reason we're seeing a huge increase in unstable accommodation is because people can't pay private landlords escalating rent prices, so they're being kicked out of private acommodation and turning to councils.

Seven in 10 councils in England are struggling to find enough stable housing for people. Many are rehousing them in B&Bs and hotels. Crisis is calling for more houses to be built, which could provide "permanent" and "genuinely affordable" homes.

Pretty much everyone agrees that there aren't enough houses. But people disagree on how you can ensure those houses are affordable. Some say we should set fixed, low rents for a certain proportion of new builds, also known as 'regulation'.

Others believe that if you build enough houses, competition will go down, which means landlords won't be able to set their prices so high – in other words, you're letting the 'free market' set the price.

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