Household Overcrowding: Covid-19

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered household overcrowding and the covid-19 outbreak.

Eleven years ago, I was contacted by a family who were very overcrowded. The father, mother, and four daughters aged from one to 10 were living in a one-bedroom council flat. In the four years that they had been applying to move, Newham Council had been unable to provide anything larger. Nine years after that, in 2019, I received a letter from the youngest of the four children, who was by then aged 11 and had a younger sister. There were now five daughters, all still living in the same one-bedroom flat. The letter from the 11-year-old said:

“Since I was born, I have not even had a good day, because all this flat does is bring back bad memories. I sleep on the floor with my two older sisters. Every night when my dad gets up to go to work, he always has to turn on the light so he doesn’t step on us. Due to this, I don’t get enough sleep. I can’t concentrate. I’m so scared, because I want to pass my SATs, but I’ve got no place to revise. I’m falling behind in class, and it is because nobody cares about me. Nobody wants to see me happy. I feel like you don’t care, because if you did, you’d help me. All of my friends invite me to birthday parties. However, I am unable to come, because I feel that if I come, they should be invited to my birthday, but I can’t, because I have no place in my house. I have never got to celebrate anything. Every day, I see my mum cry and it makes me cry.”

The family is still in that flat today. With 27,000 people on Newham Council’s housing waiting list, it is not unusual for families to wait 15 years to be housed, as that one has.

Until the 1990s, the average number of people per household in London had fallen steadily since the end of the 19th century. Now, the number is going up. Nationally, the English housing survey showed overcrowding at the highest rate ever in the social rented sector—it was 9% in 2019-20, just before the pandemic. In both the social and private sectors, the rate has roughly doubled in 20 years. I am sorry to report that in my constituency, the overall rate of overcrowding is the highest in the country, at 27%, according to the 2011 census. It will be a good deal higher than that when the data comes in from the census that is under way at the moment.

Some 34% of all Bangladeshi households are overcrowded. The figure for Pakistani households is 18%, black African 16%, Arab 15% and mixed white and black African 14%. All face high levels of overcrowding, compared with 2% for white British households. Dr Haque, who was the then interim director of the Runnymede Trust, told the Women and Equalities Committee last summer that

“there will always be multigenerational homes where people decide to live with multiple generations—maybe their mothers as well as their grandparents—but they do not ever choose to live in overcrowded housing.”

Recognising those different impacts, the Women and Equalities Committee recommended that, by the end of this summer, the Government produce a strategy to reduce overcrowding. If the Government are serious about addressing racial inequalities in public health, they must tackle overcrowding. I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us whether the strategy that the Committee has called for will be produced by the end of this summer.

We know from studies such as the Marmot review that housing is a social determinant of health. Poor housing can lead to lifelong poor physical and mental health. There is a higher risk of accidents in overcrowded homes, and there is more condensation and mould. Research has established a link between overcrowding and poor child health due to infections and respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. There is consistent evidence of poorer mental health for people in crowded homes—depression, anxiety and stress as a result of living in cramped conditions. Poor quality of sleep is one of the reasons for that. Lack of space to play or study holds back children’s development and education.

Overcrowding is associated with interrupted schooling and behavioural problems at school. It can harm family relationships and lead to fighting and arguments between children. All of that was true before the pandemic, but covid has shone a bright light on all of these problems, and overcrowding has made coping with covid much harder. Transmission within households has spread the virus. In overcrowded households, infection has spread faster. Social distancing and self-isolation can be impossible. The stress of overcrowding—long-term and familiar—has been transformed by the pandemic into a catastrophe.

Last May, Inside Housing magazine published a graph plotting local authorities’ rates of overcrowding against their covid death rates. The correlation is remarkable. Overcrowding might well partly explain the disproportionate mortality rate among ethnic minority groups. Public Health England’s review into why black and ethnic minority groups have been so badly hit by the pandemic identified poor housing and household composition as key factors.

Severe damp and mould, much more common in overcrowded homes, cause chronic respiratory problems, making people more vulnerable if they contract coronavirus. For children, the onset and worsening of asthma in overcrowded conditions is well documented. For those who have to live, learn and work in one room, the psychological impact of lockdown has been extraordinary. On a video call last month with a family in my constituency —mum, dad and another family with five daughters, this time in a two-bedroom flat—the girls pointed out to me how infeasible it was for them all to study at the same time. That family was clearly teetering on the edge. More people in overcrowded households have reported psychological distress in the lockdown.

Sometimes in Parliament when we talk about the housing crisis, we are referring to young people not being able to buy homes until they are a bit older, and that is a problem. The Government have taken various steps to try to address it by subsidising first-time buyers with starter homes, Help to Buy ISAs and the 95% mortgage announced in the Budget last week, but there was nothing at all to tackle the real housing crisis—people trapped at the bottom end of the rental market with unaffordable rents in overcrowded, poor quality homes. The heart of the problem has been the failure to replenish the social housing stock, so families in social housing are twice as likely to be overcrowded now than they would have been decades ago.

I welcomed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s housing commission report last month, with its ambition and vision. It states:

“A good home is a place…where we feel safe, it enables us to put down roots and belong to a community, it is a place we enjoy living in and which is a delight to come home to.”

That should be what we aim for. The report calls for Government action on a

“coherent, long-term housing strategy, focused on those in greatest need.”

It calls for a long-term housing affordability policy with new housing, greater public subsidy, reinstating capital grants, reducing land prices, a new housing affordability definition in terms of household incomes rather than market rents, and a review of social security to strengthen housing support.

I am old enough—just—to remember the furore in the 1960s over the housing crisis around the television play, “Cathy Come Home”, which was about a family destroyed by inadequate housing. That furore led to the foundation of Shelter and a wave of council house building. We are there again now. Families are being destroyed and lives blighted. The impact during the pandemic in the part of London that I represent was well documented in Anjli Raval’s powerful article, “Inside the ‘Covid Triangle’” in the Financial Times magazine last weekend. We need that moral outrage again and a new wave of investment in council house building. We need an alternative to private renting—a decent home where people can live and plan for their future. We have done it before; we can do it again. Councils are finding creative ways to build, such as the Red Door Ventures initiative in Newham, but we need them on a much bigger scale. The Government need to step up, and after the pandemic we need a new programme to build affordable and secure social homes.

Social security needs to tackle overcrowding. Welfare cuts over the past decade have mostly hit tenants. Freezing local housing allowance means that support is not tied to real rents and families cannot afford homes suitable to their needs. This year, thankfully, local housing allowance has been relinked to the 30th percentile of rents. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the Work and Pensions Committee, which I chair, that that change was permanent. She was unfortunately mistaken. The Chancellor has frozen rates again from next month, and the gap will start to widen all over again. The benefit cap also makes it impossible for families in London to afford the housing they need. Many households have had no benefit at all from higher housing support over the past year, because it has been immediately capped.

The Work and Pensions Committee has recommended maintaining the increases in support provided in the pandemic, including keeping local housing allowance at the 30th percentile, and conducting an annual review of rates to keep them appropriate for each area. The Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community recommended that it be tied to 50% rather than 30%, and that the Government should urgently review the operation of the local housing allowance.

Having seen the impact of household overcrowding during the pandemic, I want to ask the Minister what prospect there is of a new wave of investment in social house building on the scale that we need—or are we going to have to wait again for a Labour Government, for the overcrowding crisis to be addressed? Will he prioritise building affordable family homes with three bedrooms and more? Why have we started down the road of freezing local housing allowance again, after that policy has done so much damage over the past decade, and what response, if any, do the Government plan to make to the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s housing commission?

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes]

Under no circumstances was I attempting to take credit for that Bill, and I was delighted to be in the House when it became law. I completely endorse it, and I understand the comments of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).

[Stephen Timms]

I thank the Minister for the points that he is making. Can he tell us whether the Government will accept the recommendation of the Women and Equalities Committee and bring forward a strategy to tackle overcrowding by the end of the summer?

[Eddie Hughes]

The Government are already doing things to tackle overcrowding, not least with our substantial investment in new house building. The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of points in his speech, and I will cover some of them. He asked if we expect a new wave of investment in social house building. We need house building of all tenures, and the Government have demonstrated their commitment to increasing the affordable housing supply. We are investing more than £12 billion in affordable housing over five years—the largest investment for a decade. That includes the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which will provide up to 180,000 homes across the country; and a further £9 billion for the shared ownership and affordable homes programme, running to 2023, which will deliver 250,000 new affordable homes. The affordable homes programme will deliver more than double the social rent of the current programme, with around 32,000 social rented properties due to be delivered

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made a characteristically powerful contribution, as did the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am grateful to them both, and to the Front Benchers.

The real housing crisis is about people trapped at the bottom end of the rental market, paying unaffordable rents in overcrowded, inadequate homes. As we have been reminded, there was absolutely nothing in the Budget to help. It may well be, as it was in the 1960s, that we have to wait for a Labour Government, and for my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) to become the housing Secretary, for us to get the programme of investment that we need.

I would just say to the Minister, as he takes up his role—I know that he is very enthusiastic—