London households in temporary accommodation

Temporary accommodation by borough

Every borough in London, except Hounslow, has a higher proportion of households living in temporary accommodation than the average in England.

Newham has by far the highest rate of households in temporary accommodation - for every 1,000 households, 50.25 are living in temporary accommodation. Other boroughs with high rates include Redbridge (26.89 per 1,000 households), and Southwark (26.05 per 1,000 households). In contrast Hounslow (3.26 per 1,000 households) and Merton (4.51 per 1,000 households) have some of the lowest rates.

Housed in different local authorities

Sometimes local authorities will provide temporary accommodation outside of their area. This is particularly common in London, where local authorities face the twin challenges of greater demand for homelessness services and more expensive accommodation in which to house people. For every 1,000 households in Newham, 17.58 were housed in temporary accommodation outside of the borough in the third quarter of 2023. This is the highest proportion for any local authority in London.

Note:

All figures provided here refer to “households”. This refers to groups of people who live together (such as families, couples and other multi-adult households) and single adults. The dates span 4 quarters up to Q3 2023. Figures for Lambeth have not been reported due to missing data on all four quarters.