Two decades ago, around 26,000 people were waiting for social housing. Now that figure is over 45,000
The chronic shortage of social housing in London means that in multiple boroughs, there are over 10,000 people waiting for suitable accommodation. The boroughs with the largest waiting lists for social housing in 2022 were Lambeth (33,640 households), Newham (33,246) and Brent (25,218). From 1997 to 2022, the largest growth in the number of households on the social housing waiting list occurred in Newham in 2016, where the list of 17,453 households grew to 25,729 in 2017. Some boroughs witnessed significant drops in the numbers of households on the waiting list in particular years. For example, from 2015 to 2016, Camden’s waiting list decreased from 24,644 to 2,930. However, this has not always been due to the allocation of more social housing, but the tightening of criteria needed to qualify, which vary by borough and so do not perfectly correlate with the number of people in need of a home.