'The most heartbreaking stories of my career': Reporting on homelessness in Enfield

This article is an adaptation of the content of a Twitter thread posted between Christmas and New Year by the editor of Enfield Dispatch, James Cracknell (who tweets as @JollyJourno), and is republished with his permission. The thread summarises and comments on the content of 15 news items about homelessness in the London Borough of Enfield published between March and December last year.

Click on the photos or captions to read the Enfield Dispatch reports.

Housing and homelessness is always a recurrent theme when you're a local journalist, and I've covered many aspects of it over the last 16 years in the profession, but the stories I've had to write in 2023 have been the most heartbreaking of my career. Here's a thread of them.

It started in March, when I met a family with a pregnant, disabled mother, her husband and toddler, who had been living in Enfield Travelodge for four months. I cried in the car park after meeting them. Thankfully, they were rehoused a week later.

This first story alerted me to the rapid rise in families housed in B&Bs - which in local authority jargon means emergency temporary housing, where you don't get your own cooking or washing facilities. B&Bs are a last resort, but the numbers for Enfield borough were skyrocketing.

Later in March my colleague Simon Allin revealed some of the numbers:

200 Enfield families in hotels

Council spending £500k per month, up ten-fold in a year

Supply of affordable rented homes down 90% in two years

£6m overspend on temporary housing

I then met another family living in the Travelodge, the Rembikowskis, who were made homeless from a house fire seven months previously. They discovered they couldn't afford anything else on the market. Disabled dad Piotr told me he "had no hope left".

Whenever I visited the Travelodge by the A10 in Enfield, it was noticeable that there were many children there, bored and frustrated, as they roamed the corridors looking for something to do. Scores of families were simply living there for months on end.

But some families were also being moved from one hotel to another, in different parts of North London or beyond. In May many had to be relocated to allow fans of pop star Beyoncé to stay at the Enfield Travelodge for her concerts in Tottenham.

To try to understand the problems in the rental market that were creating this massive homelessness pressure at the council, I spoke to a number of local estate agents. Some were quite candid, telling me it was "chaotic".

While this was a problem being seen across the country, it was particularly acute in Enfield because of the much smaller number of social-rent homes compared with other London boroughs, meaning there was an over-reliance on cheap rental homes to make up the gap.

In June I got some data back from an FOI request that revealed the full extent of the problem. The number of homeless families from Enfield living in B&Bs beyond the government’s six-week legal limit had risen exponentially in a year, from one to 113.

Then came a new policy announcement from Enfield Council. The Labour administration had been trying to end out-of-borough temporary housing placements, but now agreed to send families out of London and the south-east entirely. It was a massive U-turn.

A week later I met a third Enfield family living in a hotel, this time in Finchley. Incredibly, a mother with quadruplets had been living there for four months following a Section 21 (no-fault) eviction. Two weeks after publication, they were rehoused.

The council, as well as Enfield's three local MPs, were putting pressure on the government to intervene. In parliament Edmonton MP @KateOsamor demanded the council be given "the resources it needs" to "end this hotels crisis".

The immediate measures that were needed were an end to the three-year freeze on the Local Housing Allowance, which sets benefit levels, and a ban on no-fault evictions. Despite some warm words and even a pledge to do the latter, the government continued to drag its feet.

In September I reported that Enfield now had the highest rate of no-fault evictions in London, with new data showing that 477 local families had been turfed out of their homes in the four years since the government promised to end Section 21.

In October I spoke again with the Rembikowski family, who had by then been living in hotels for over a year. I even accompanied disabled dad Piotr as he turned up at Enfield Civic Centre one morning to demand answers from his housing officer.

Meanwhile, government stalling continued. In a parliamentary debate on the much-delayed Renters Reform Bill, Enfield North MP @FeryalClark shared a tragic story of a no-fault eviction in her constituency. But the ban on Section 21 was kicked down the road.

In November, I reported on the latest data, which showed that the number of Enfield families with children being housed in B&Bs beyond the government’s six-week legal limit had hit 150. In total, there were 247 local children living in hotels.

There was finally some good news in November as the chancellor's Autumn Statement included an increase in the Local Housing Allowance. Council leader

@Nesil_Caliskan welcomed the move but warned local authority finances were still "under immense pressure".

As many Enfield families prepared to spend Christmas day in hotel rooms, I spoke to a single mum whose situation was even worse. After she refused a move to Telford the council "discharged its legal duty", forcing Freda and her three kids onto the streets.

I feel very strongly that housing and homelessness are the biggest issues facing this country right now. I think 2023 will go down as the moment when 40 years of Right to Buy, 30 years of Buy to Let, and 13 years of gov't austerity, created a perfect storm for housing in the UK.

For all our economic woes in recent years, the UK remains one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and the fact that 140,000 children were homeless this Christmas is a national disgrace. Please check out this excellent report from @DanielHewittITV>

Something – well, a lot of things – need to change in 2024. Tackling homelessness won't be easy but it should absolutely be a top priority for whoever wins next year's general election. We simply cannot go on like this. These families deserve so much better.