This article by Liam Thorp, Political Editor for the Liverpool Echo and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness, looks at the structural causes behind a spike in homelessness in the City.

Anthony Mills was happy in his new flat. The 28-year-old office worker moved into a place in Liverpool city centre at the end of 2020, for £599 a month. He was starting to enjoy life in his new home. But this sense of peace and stability was quickly shattered.

“I started to receive a bombardment of emails from the landlord’s agents, demanding significant rent increases,” said Anthony. He was told he needed to agree to a new rental fee of £710 or face eviction. “I found myself facing an unaffordable situation,” he explained. “Despite my efforts to engage in constructive dialogue with the agents and express my concerns, my situation continued to deteriorate.”

As Anthony had refused to agree to the rent increases, he was eventually served with a Section 21 eviction notice by his landlord. He said: “The threat of eviction, coupled with the ongoing rent disputes, took a significant toll on my mental and physical health. “I was left in a heightened state of stress and unease.

“After weeks of these unpleasant rent increase demands I was forced out of my home. I had to put all my possessions into a shopping trolley and became homeless. I had always paid my agreed rent in full and on time so to be evicted felt totally unfair.”

Thankfully Anthony was able to quickly find another property to move into – but the whole experience left him traumatised. He couldn’t believe the way he had been treated was legal. Others have not been as fortunate to find a new home so soon.

Without a roof over his head

Tomasz Janas, 34, experienced a rapid descent into rough sleeping. Originally from Poland, Tomasz had a job and a flat that he rented before everything spiralled out of control in a matter of weeks. When he was suddenly let go from his job as a forklift driver, Tomasz’s landlord then evicted him without notice – and he could not afford to pay for a lawyer to help him challenge the decision. Suddenly he found himself without a roof over his head, bedding down in the doorway of a store in Church Street in Liverpool city centre. It all happened so quickly.

“It’s not nice but I have to keep trying to do my best,” he explains. “I am hoping to get back to a normal life.”

Liverpool City Council says landlord evictions are now the main cause of homelessness in the city. A ban on these Section 21 or no fault evictions was first proposed in 2019 by then Prime Minister Theresa May, meaning that private landlords would no longer be able to evict tenants for no reason.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove has kicked the long-promised ban further down the road, saying that the ban on Section 21 evictions won’t come into effect until a range of new conditions are met. Critics have said these changes could take years.

This further delay means bad news for people like Anthony and Tomasz and bad news for councils like Liverpool, which has a housing and homelessness crisis that is now reaching an alarming spike. Local authorities have a legal duty to prevent and relieve homelessness, but this is becoming increasingly difficult against a backdrop of soaring need, limited housing options and depleting council resources. The numbers of households in Liverpool presenting as homeless has been increasing steadily – but in the past year it has really accelerated.

There are currently 885 households in the city that are living in a range of temporary accommodation. Of that number, a worrying 407 have exceeded the six weeks that statutory guidance suggests is the maximum amount of time people should be housed in bed and breakfast accommodation.

Homelessness demand will continue to increase

The costs are soaring. The council spent £8.67m housing people in temporary accommodation in 2021-22 – for the following financial year that number had more than doubled to £17.24m. For council bosses in the city, there is a grim expectation that the homelessness demand will continue to increase over the coming year due to a toxic combination of factors including the cost-of-living crisis, increasing private sector rents and a lack of affordable accommodation.

The city has an additional looming issue in the shape of 400 refugee and asylum seeker households which are currently funded by central government in the city. These households will shortly be entitled to access public funds, such as housing support from the cash-strapped city council.

Government changes to the process for those being granted refugee status meant that people were given just seven days’ notice that they need to leave their accommodation. This makes it incredibly difficult for them to find secure accommodation and will inevitably place even more pressure on the city council’s increasingly threadbare homelessness services – along with city charities that are working round the clock to prevent more people ending up on the streets.

All these factors are combining to fuel Liverpool’s homelessness crisis. The city has seen an alarming 47% rise in its number of people sleeping rough in just one year between September 2022 and September 2023. And the trajectory is frightening. The increase between August and September of this year – just one month – was 15%.

There is a particular concern about the number of young people now finding themselves in need of emergency accommodation. Currently 17% of single people in temporary bed and breakfasts in Liverpool are under the age of 25. The additional costs of supporting the unprecedented number of people finding themselves in crisis is pushing councils like Liverpool to the very edge.

Hundreds of local authorities of all political colours came together for an emergency accommodation and homelessness summit, resulting in a powerful combined demand for immediate funding and support from the government. Representing Liverpool Council was the city council’s cabinet member for housing, Cllr Sarah Doyle, who has personal experience of the impact of Section 21 evictions herself.

The stress people have to go through is huge

“I care for my niece and nephew with my partner, we were privately renting,” she explained. “Then in May our landlord decided to increase the rent. We felt it was way too much and we were served a Section 21 notice. “It was ironic because we had been reporting issues with damp and mould for a long time and they said to fix these issues they would have to increase the rent, which we didn’t think was fair. Then one day we got the eviction notice.”

“We are people who understand the system, but we still found it incredibly difficult to find another place,” she said. “The stress that people have to go through is huge. This is becoming the norm for so many people.” She added: “The government has basically deprioritised any meaningful housing policy. We are now in a situation where local housing benefit rates have not increased, so people who are entitled to receive it cannot afford to rent anywhere, because rents have gone up.

“There has been no long-term funding for social housing building. “This means we are way over the cliff in terms of the housing crisis, we are in the aftermath of it really. We are living in the consequences of a lack of government action.” She added: “What I am seeing more of now is people experiencing homelessness who are working full time, they have had steady employment, but they can no longer afford their rent – it is no longer just people with complex needs, it is a variety of people.

“There are lots of older people who have lived in private rented properties for 20-plus years who are now saying ‘my landlord is walking away, I’ve got no idea what to do now or how I navigate this’.”

The city council transferred all its housing stock to social providers decades ago. Now more than half of all properties in the city are in the private or social rented sector, way above the national average. The council itself owns just 80 properties in total now. This is tiny compared with cities like Birmingham (60,000), Leeds (54,000) and Manchester (12,500) and means the council is reliant on registered providers – which are all struggling with inflation and costs at present – to build social housing.

There are currently 14,000 people in the city on the social housing waiting list. It also means that the private rented sector has a huge stranglehold on housing in Liverpool, with more and more landlords now selling up and kicking out tenants as they deal with soaring mortgages.

“We had a recent example of a landlord who was paying £350 a month for their mortgage two years ago is now paying £1,150,” explains the council’s current housing director Zulfiqar Mulak. “So they are saying they can’t break even with the rents they are getting. They are kicking people out and selling the houses.”

“With rising interest rates, a lot of landlords are just pulling out of the market because they can’t afford it. Either that or they increase the rents and people can’t afford to pay it. “So they get evicted and then present to the council for help.”

He added: “Liverpool has lost out in terms of investment in housing over the years. We are reliant on our housing association partners to build, but they can only build if there is enough government investment.” Of the 14,000 on the waiting list, he adds: “They haven’t got much hope, only a small proportion will get a property.”

Like most at the city council, the city’s housing boss is deeply worried about the months ahead. “We are doing a lot of planning,” he says, “we are working really closely with charities to try and minimise the impact on people. We are looking to set up extra provision between December and March. It is a huge challenge for us.”

That extra provision includes 25 new temporary services around the city to provide emergency shelter for those who suddenly find themselves without a home. “It’s not ideal,” admits Cllr Doyle. “But there will be more spaces in the city where people can be safe and warm and get something to eat and drink. We can only do this thanks to our amazing charity and voluntary sector. They are complete heroes.”

But she knows the efforts of charities and volunteers are not enough to deal with this crisis. “We are falling off the cliff” adds Cllr Doyle, “we need serious government intervention right now.

This article was first published by the Liverpool Echo.