Towns surrounding London including in Berkshire, Surrey and Hertfordshire are feeling the strain of the capital’s housing crisis
Chiara Repetti pushes her two-year-old daughter in a pram along the noisy road which leads to Templefields House. Two Tesco bags hanging low from each handle, she’s out of breath as she steers right into the converted former office block.
Chiara, a single mum, is struggling to cope with raising her children in the isolation of suburban Harlow.
“It’s awful,” she says. “They said I need to stay here for four years. All because I said no to a single room in Croydon. But we were stuck there.”
Chiara has lived here in Templefields House for five months after being moved to Harlow by Lewisham Council. The 31-year-old is one of dozens of people and families placed in the disused office block by different London boroughs.
Templefields House is one of 12 former office blocks being used across Harlow for temporary accommodation by London councils who are increasingly looking far beyond their own borders for places to put homeless families.
This scene is also played out in Basildon, Grays, Slough and other towns across the home counties which offer cheaper housing for cash-strapped London boroughs. These towns are quietly being filled with Londoners who don’t want to be there, and who locals don’t particularly want there.
Council leaders in Harlow and Basildon have labelled this practice as “inhumane”, lamenting that vulnerable people are often moved far away from support networks to an area they have no link to.
For Chiara, this rings true. “I’m in a prison,” she says in a defeated tone. “How could they possibly send me here? Alone, with nobody. They don’t care about me or my children at all.”
The struggling mum describes initially being housed in a single Croydon hotel room with her family. After lodging a complaint against the South London council via her MP, Lewisham gave her the option of being homeless or moving to the converted former office block.
The mum-of-two is trying to get a council flat in Lewisham, an area she called home for seven years, but has since been told she’ll only realistically be housed there again in four years.
Before moving in, Chiara saw multiple articles online about the horrors of Templefields House. A BBC Panorama investigation in 2020 revealed a cleaner quit her job after finding a weeks-old corpse in a room. She described the awful smell which hit her as she opened the door, while flies could be seen everywhere.
The same report likened it to a “human warehouse” where “drug-dealing, violence and antisocial behaviour are rife”. Residents say the block remains unsafe, with many claiming their lives are blighted by intimidating men who wander around the car park.
One mother told MyLondon she had been sexually assaulted earlier this year, and that she and her daughter had witnessed a woman get stabbed outside the window from where they were eating breakfast.
Chiara adds: “I didn’t want to come here. It’s dangerous and I’m cut off from everywhere. And I can’t even get to Lewisham, I’ve not been back since I moved here. Just for me it costs £20 alone, and I’d have to walk an hour with my children to the train station.
“My life isn’t in my hands anymore.”
‘I feel ashamed to live here’
Momotaz Islam has lived in a two-bed ‘flat’ in Templefields House with her husband and two children since July 2024. They were in Gants Hill, East London for nine years, but when the landlord of the house Redbridge Council was renting on their behalf decided to sell up, they were given the sole option of moving to Harlow.
The 57-year-old mum, who moved to London from Bangladesh 24 years ago, describes their situation as “neglect” and says they feel as if they are not important to Redbridge Council.
Her husband is on dialysis for kidney failure and has suffered four heart attacks in the past two years. As a result she’s forced to share a bed with her 17-year-old daughter in the only other room, while her 19-year-old son sleeps on a mattress on the floor.
“I feel ashamed to live here,” Momotaz says, staring at the floor. “It’s often all I can think about. This is a terrible place to live, I’ve never invited any friends or family over since we moved as I feel I can’t. It’s very sad for me and my family.”
In the cramped space, boxes containing plates, glasses and towels are stacked up to eye-level in the hallway, while cardboard boxes and holdall bags with more belongings are strewn across all corners of the kitchen and living room.
Momotaz previously worked at Sainsbury’s in Newbury Park but was unable to transfer to the Harlow store and has since struggled to find a job. Ashraful, 63, has been transferred to the Princess Alexandra Hospital for his tri-weekly dialysis treatments. Their two younger children have been severely affected by the move to Essex with arduous daily journeys into London for their studies.
Their eldest son Mashrur, 30, who works as an electrical engineer for BT, lives apart from his family but was also forced to rent a home in Harlow to support Ashraful’s care.
“It’s been tough for all of us,” Mashrur tells MyLondon. “My sister has to take a bus and train to get to school every day. She wakes up at six and rushes into school to get there for 8:30. Her studies have taken a hit as she’s getting lower grades than she was before.
“My brother is going to City University which is also lengthy and just so expensive to get to. We’re not getting any help at all from Redbridge Council.”
Harlow feeling the strain
While homeless families feel abandoned by London boroughs housing them far from the city, many places being used for temporary accommodation are struggling with the pressure of housing them. The influx of new residents has put a considerable strain on local housing, services and infrastructure; while there’s been a knock-on effect in terms of crime rates increasing due to the influx of vulnerable people in unsettled housing situations.
Police figures show crime shot up by 20 per cent in Harlow town centre in the 10 months after Terminus House, another former office block housing Londoners, opened for homeless families in April 2018. The 14-storey 1960s office block has since been labelled a key symbol of the town’s decline, prompting a move from Harlow Council in September 2025 to buy the dilapidated block for redevelopment.
It’s a move met with praise by residents across the town who are fed up with Londoners taking up local housing. But back under the whims of their home boroughs, many homeless families have been told they’re being moved to Crawley, Slough or even Bristol.
Dan Swords, Leader of Harlow Council, was behind the drive to buy Terminus House and is pushing to stop other former office blocks being used for temporary accommodation.
“It’s so unjust,” he told MyLondon. “I’ve not met anyone in temporary accommodation from a London borough that said they wanted to be moved away from family or any support they have to Harlow.
“There’s no support, they’ve dumped these people, essentially. They’re literally shipping people with no support to somewhere they don’t want to be in sub-standard accommodation.
“There’s been issues with enforcement when issues have been raised about damp, mould and overcrowding. We’re spending our own taxpayer money enforcing for another council because they’re failing to provide suitable homes. I recognise the challenge those London boroughs are under, but that is their challenge to deal with, not ours.”
Cllr Swords added that council tax on homes in these disused office blocks often goes unpaid because they’re technically classed as commercial premises. He claims there are hundreds of thousands of pounds in unpaid arrears.
Harlow Council has a policy where homeless people are not moved into temporary accommodation outside the borough. The council said this pledge is becoming harder to uphold as they’re competing against London councils with bigger budgets.
“We have dozens of examples of where we privately rented a house for temporary accommodation,” Cllr Swords continued, “but a London borough will come in and pay double what we can pay.
“The Government points to existing legislation in place where the council is meant to notify us when they’re housing people here. But barely ever happens. The legislation is not strong enough. Unless it’s an extraordinary circumstance and for a very short period of time you should not be placing people who live in your area somewhere else.”
Cllr Swords, who became the Essex council’s youngest ever leader when took over aged 22 in 2023, claimed some London boroughs resorted to the sly practice of moving a homeless resident to Harlow for five years before telling them they’re now eligible for Harlow’s council housing, effectively washing their hands of them.
Harlow Conservatives put a stop to it but believe the Government should step in to outlaw it everywhere.
“A lot of northern councils are seeing it now; you have people from London being moved to the northern tip of the country with no support,” Cllr Swords said. “Councils should work on prevention, building more homes and doing the things necessary to actually tackle these challenges.”
Redbridge Council was contacted for comment but did not respond.
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