London is at the centre of the UK’s homelessness crisis, with an estimated 183,000 people – one in every 50 Londoners, including one in 21 children – living in temporary accommodation.
Local authorities with an obligation to shelter the 73,000 households who don’t have a stable roof over their heads are collectively spending £114million a month on hostels, hotels and B&Bs due to a shortage of suitable accommodation.
To combat this growing problem, City Hall has approved the rollout of modular homes – effectively like flat pack homes that are made in sections in factories then transported to be put together on site – with the first to be delivered in Havering later this year.
Developed alongside Wates Residential and Rollalong, the quickly and cheaply built housing units are seen as an “immediate relief” while officials look for a long-term solution to London’s homelessness problem.
What are these homes?
A prototype will go on tour across the UK after being installed in less than two hours outside City Hall in late August.
Realistically, each modular home will take 70 days to build and install. They are relocatable, meaning councils can, in theory, adapt to their temporary accommodation need as demand fluctuates.
While there is no immediate information about the cost of building and installing the homes – Wates were contacted for comment – Rollalong say that local authorities “can recoup their investment within three to five years and save up to £63,500 per household per year compared to existing temporary housing”.
Each property includes a fully fitted kitchen with a dishwasher, washer-dryer and fridge-freezer, and a bathroom with a fully sized bath. The home has a 60-year lifespan, with residents expected to live there for up to six years before the unit is moved to another available site.
They will likely be used on vacant brownfield land owned by the Greater London Authority until that plot is developed on.
Why are they needed?
Approximately 90,000 additional social homes need to be built every year over the next decade in England to address the housing crisis. Between 2022 and 2023, just 9,500 were built.
Research from London Councils showed the capital’s boroughs are currently spending £4million a day on various forms of accommodation.
Officials say that while the Mayor has already launched programmes to boost affordable housing across London, traditional construction takes time and current housing stock cannot meet this demand.
73,000 households in London living in temporary accommodation
1 in 50 Londoners living in temporary accommodation
1 in 21 children living in temporary accommodation
£114million collectively spent by London boroughs per month on temporary accommodation
Tom Copley, Deputy Mayor for Housing, said: “We all recognise we’ve got a housing crisis in London, and for people who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation, they are at the absolute sharpest end of this.
“One of the key solutions is building the homes that we need, and in particular, social rented homes. And we also need interim solutions as well, while we build the social rented homes that we desperately need. That’s why solutions like this are so vital.”
Long term solution or a band aid for London’s housing failure?
City Hall is keen to stress that this is no more than an interim solution while officials scramble to speed up the delivery of genuinely affordable housing.
A source told the LDRS: “These homes are not a replacement for investing in long-term housing, but they provide a practical, high-quality solution in the short term for the hundreds of thousands of households that immediately need accommodation.
“By working with local authorities to use available land, we can ensure these homes are placed in the communities that need them – close to schools, jobs, and support networks – and transform the lives of families in need as we continue to build a better, fairer London for all.”
As well as renters being “priced out” in all 32 boroughs of London, recent figures showed developers only started building 347 affordable homes from April to June.
“Long term, we have to be building the high-quality, affordable, particularly social, homes that are needed to address the housing crisis,” Mr Copley said last month. “But in the meantime, we do need temporary solutions like this.”
Pip Prongué, Executive Managing Director of Wates Residential, said the houses were “safe, warm and located where families need them most – close to schools, jobs and support networks”.
However, experts have warned that the proliferation of modular homes could be risky if City Hall fails to back it up with significant investment in social housebuilding. They also urged officials to hold developers to account if they fail to deliver suitable accommodation.
Dr Mel Nowicki, Associate Professor of Urban Geography at Oxford Brookes University, told the LDRS: ‘”In London, more than one in 23 children are homeless, living in cramped, poor quality temporary accommodation for months, years, sometimes entire childhoods. In this context modular homes can be an important source of comfort and respite for people experiencing the trauma of homelessness.
“As temporary accommodation becomes more common and long term, modular homes need to be built to the highest standards, and built to last. Some modular units I’ve researched have been branded as ‘pop-up’, i.e. can be moved across different locations, but in the end were not robust enough for this to happen.
“Others have claimed to have 60-year life spans but have deteriorated significantly in less than 10.
“Ultimately, we should be careful about referring to any form of temporary accommodation, modular or otherwise, as a solution to London’s housing crisis. The only true solutions will come from bold decision-making at the national government level, including significant social housebuilding, investment in local authorities, and more compassionate welfare policies such as increasing LHA [Local Housing Allowance] rates and scrapping the two-child benefit cap.”
Idea is ‘a sticking plaster’
Housing researcher Ella Harris added that City Hall needs to roll out a plan for where residents will go after a few years in the modular homes.
“Solutions like this can never be viable long term if there isn’t appropriate, genuinely affordable housing for people to move into from temporary accommodation,” she said. “Without proper investment in council housing and interventions like rent caps, better temporary accommodation can only ever be a sticking plaster.”
Maggie Rafalowicz, the director of Campbell Tickell, a consultancy firm which set up a national Temporary Accommodation Network, agreed that “the real solution to the temporary accommodation crisis is to increase the supply of affordable housing”.
She added: “In the meantime, we need to do as much as possible to provide quality housing for homeless households – avoiding costly nighty paid accommodation such as hotels and hostels and poor quality private rented homes. Apart from the crippling costs, the impact on families’ health and wellbeing and children’s educational attainment is devastating.
“Modular homes are part of the solution – they can provide good quality and energy efficient homes and can be designed for family use.
“Modular units built off site can be lowered onto small sites that would otherwise not be developed or for meanwhile use on, for example, large phased developments. Flexibility by planning departments and access to grant funding would make it easier and quicker to provide more such homes.”
Whether it is part of the solution to fixing a long-term crisis or simply a stopgap to buy the Mayor more time to lift affordable housing figures, officials will be keeping a keen eye on results in Havering and its 18-home trial.
Greg Hurst, of the Centre for Homelessness Impact, said it was simply a case of waiting for the initial results for City Hall before committing to rolling it out en masse.
“As with so many interventions in homelessness, modular housing has not been subjected to independent evaluation and so there is no rigorous evidence of its effectiveness,” he warned.
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