Thousands Could be Homeless by Christmas

Every two minutes between now and Christmas Day, someone in Britain will face the prospect of losing their home. That’s the finding of new research from the housing charity Shelter, highlighting the struggles the property market still faces.

According to the charity’s research, around 35,000 people face a battle to keep a roof over their head in time for Santa’s arrival.

The charity has launched a campaign to highlight the plight of the hundreds of people each day who will receive a letter threatening them with homelessness, and the impact such an experience can have on their mental health.

Shelter’s research found that 61% of people who have either been homeless or faced the threat of homelessness said it had led directly to a stress related illness.

Repossession, repossession, repossession

Every quarter, the Council of Mortgage Lenders publishes figures on the number of repossessions that have taken place, and of late the message has been pretty positive, with the figures regularly being lower than expected.

As a result, people like me can get a little bit complacent about it. After all, the number of properties repossessed in the first half of this year was down 7% on the same period last year. Good news right?

Well yes, but that was still 18,100 properties that lenders took back from borrowers.

And that’s just the number of repossessions that actually took place, what about the borrowers who are simply being warned that if things don’t improve, they may lose their homes? There are currently 164,500 mortgages where the borrower is in arrears of more than 2.5% of the mortgage balance. Sure, that figure has fallen, but it’s still an awful lot of people who are seriously behind on their mortgage payments.

Undoubtedly, some of these people will have no-one but themselves to blame. Perhaps they told a few porky pies in order to get a larger mortgage than they should have, and now the chickens have come home to roost. But equally, plenty of them will simply be victims of circumstance, caught out by an economic crash that was not their fault.

Kicking out tenants

The situation is hardly any better in the rental market.

Social landlords are already reporting a rise in rent arrears following the government’s move to reduce housing benefit earlier this year. Meanwhile, research by the Financial Inclusion Centre earlier this year concluded that as many as three million renters are in a vulnerable position, either behind on their rent or struggling to pay it each month.