Homelessness
Housing in general has been explicitly excluded from policies and strategies concerned with economic fairness, since it is a major responsibility of the Mayor dealt with through its own strategies elsewhere. However, homelessness is the extreme facet of inequality which is included in the indicators of economic fairness. Homelessness can take many forms, and the extreme of that is people with no roof at all sleeping rough in the city. The number of individuals seen sleeping rough in London was 11,993 last year, continuing the general increasing trend since the first count undertaken in this way in 2005/6, though it has been more volatile in the last few years, having been higher during first years of the pandemic, but lower in 2021/22.
The legislation and duties around homeless households changed at April 2018, so the previous data collection is no longer appropriate. Under the new legislation, there are duties for prevention and relief of homelessness. Some 12,000 households were accepted as homeless and owed a main duty by London local authorities during 2022/23, compared with 41,000 in the rest of England. but the total number housed in temporary accommodation by London local authorities was around 60,000 throughout the year, of which, nearly 40,000 included children.
