00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to this Kent Tonight special
00:24 with me, Maya Franklin.
00:26 We're looking at the social housing issue in Kent.
00:30 The latest official figures of 2022 show
00:33 that nearly 20,000 families are
00:36 on social housing waiting lists throughout the county,
00:39 causing a major crisis.
00:41 Our reporter Ella Ruhle is spending time with families
00:45 in a Folkestone and Hythe emergency accommodation.
00:48 - This is Bobbie and her three-year-old son, Thomas,
00:55 better known as Tom-Tom, the homeless.
00:58 As she gives me a tour of where she's being put up,
01:03 the smell of mold follows us.
01:05 As you can see, where the water's leaking,
01:10 I'll see on the floor.
01:13 I clean this every other day.
01:15 They aren't allowed chairs,
01:16 so we sit on this mattress in the living room.
01:19 This is where they sleep.
01:21 Tom-Tom had been bitten by fleas in the room.
01:25 He was crying out of pain,
01:26 because obviously he was itching and it made it worse.
01:29 And I've showed the counsellor these,
01:31 and they haven't responded.
01:34 At night time on my own, I get upset, I cry.
01:37 I know they say, you know, you should be lucky
01:39 you've got a roof over your head,
01:40 but this is a dangerous building.
01:42 They've omitted that.
01:43 Downstairs, a family of four are forced
01:46 to be a family of three.
01:47 - Was autistic, and she's having to stay, what,
01:52 25 miles away from us?
01:53 - Yeah.
01:54 - Five days a week just to be able to get to school.
01:56 I get really anxious being here,
01:58 because there's quite a lot of bad people around here.
02:02 - There's always people outside, like,
02:04 having rows, arguing, like, three, four o'clock
02:06 in the morning, smashing glass bottles.
02:09 It's not the sort of place you want to bring your kids up.
02:12 - I'm about to speak to the social housing ombudsman
02:14 for the country.
02:16 Last year, in a Watchdog report,
02:17 he found that Kent had the highest number
02:19 of social landlord complaints
02:21 out of anywhere across the country.
02:23 We want to know, have things got better?
02:25 - We undertake thousands of investigations a year.
02:30 We complete an investigation roughly every 30 minutes.
02:34 - Very clear that there are issues in Kent,
02:39 that there are issues in the southeast of England,
02:41 and that's a message which has come out of our casework.
02:46 I think there are obviously some really great things
02:50 that are happening, and housing, social housing
02:53 in particular, plays a really vital and important role
02:57 in the area, but there are also things which are going wrong.
03:00 And what we want to try and do is share the lessons
03:03 from our casework to try and prevent those things
03:07 reoccurring and going wrong again.
03:09 - Would you say that this is something
03:10 that has improved in Kent,
03:12 or has gotten worse in the past year?
03:15 - I think it would be a mixed picture
03:17 across different landlords.
03:18 There were many different landlords
03:20 whose cases we investigate operating in the county,
03:24 but overall, the situation that we've seen
03:28 has got marginally worse over the year.
03:31 - There's issues with the electrics in this place.
03:33 We've had the fire alarms go off,
03:35 and nothing's set them off, they've just gone off.
03:39 And then on the little firebox, it says,
03:41 an electrical fault.
03:43 It was for Flat 4, who no one lives in,
03:45 and it was going off, and there was a guy
03:47 who came round to fix it, and he couldn't fix it,
03:51 so he put it on silent.
03:52 - And we had the fire alarms,
03:53 the council come out a few hours later, didn't they?
03:55 - Yeah.
03:56 - And they said that this place
03:58 just should have a bomb dropped on it.
04:00 - Which is just-- - That's how bad it is here.
04:01 - You don't say that someone's living in the accommodation.
04:05 - I decide to visit Portlight,
04:07 Kent's largest charity for the homeless.
04:09 - It's a really difficult time, to be perfectly honest.
04:13 And, you know, we're doing everything we can,
04:15 but we can't pretend that it's things
04:18 that won't get worse before they get better.
04:20 Ultimately, with Kent and Medway,
04:24 specifically, it's been pushed towards a homelessness crisis.
04:27 The lack of social housing plays quite a big part.
04:29 I speak to people who are on these waiting lists,
04:31 and maybe they're in sort of this really cramped housing
04:35 you hear about generations, multiple generations of families
04:40 who are under one roof, or they're living in somewhere
04:43 that's essentially, you know, dirty,
04:46 not really, that's not really fit for habitation.
04:49 - At night time on my own, I get upset, I cry,
04:53 and I'm like, "Ugh."
04:54 Mold, damp.
04:56 I have to keep my windows open constantly,
04:58 'cause I have to see a specialist for my lungs now,
05:01 'cause my asthma's not controlled enough.
05:04 It's like serious stuff,
05:06 and you're just leaving it constantly.
05:08 And it's like with the fleas, I've told them since day one,
05:12 they've not done nothing about it.
05:14 I can't live here any longer.
05:17 It is, seriously, it is really depressing.
05:20 - Ella Rule, KMTV.
05:23 - Joining me down the line is Councillor Rebecca Shoeb.
05:28 She's a profile holder of housing and homelessness
05:31 at Green Party Folkstone in Hythe District Council.
05:35 Hi, Rebecca, thank you for being here.
05:38 So we've seen some of these families' circumstances.
05:43 What plans are in place by the council
05:46 to deal with high-risk issues like this?
05:49 - So, I mean, health and safety issues
05:53 are absolutely key priority for us.
05:57 I can't comment, I'm sure you'll appreciate,
06:00 on the particular cases you've just looked at.
06:04 I don't have all the details of those,
06:05 but I'm absolutely very happy to,
06:07 we'll certainly take those up with officers
06:10 after we've spoken.
06:13 Yeah, so, I mean, I absolutely feel
06:18 for people that are in temporary accommodation,
06:21 it's not a situation that, you know,
06:25 it is very much a last resort
06:28 and it's not an easy situation to be in.
06:30 I certainly appreciate that.
06:32 - Yeah, definitely.
06:33 And I mean, with, you know, due increased housing costs,
06:37 rent, energy and food bills continuing to increase,
06:42 the likelihood of this housing crisis
06:45 may lead to, you know, a homelessness crisis.
06:48 Is that something that the council is prepared for?
06:50 - Yeah, I mean, we're acutely aware
06:55 of the difficulties that people are facing.
06:57 And yeah, it's an absolute, you know,
07:01 I speak to my officers regularly about it.
07:04 They are preparing.
07:07 We, you know, we are very aware of the situation
07:11 that people are facing, the difficulties.
07:13 And, you know, the housing crisis
07:16 has been going on for a long time
07:18 and it's not showing any signs of easing up.
07:20 So the pressures are just building.
07:23 You know, we're hearing about,
07:24 obviously rents are going up in the private sector,
07:28 up and up and difficulties now with mortgages.
07:32 So yes, it's something we are trying our best to have.
07:34 - Thank you, thank you, Rebecca.
07:35 That's all we do have time for,
07:37 but thank you so much for your comments.
07:39 That was Rebecca Shue,
07:40 profile holder for housing and homelessness
07:42 at Green Party Folkstone and Hythe District Council.
07:46 Investigations into two specific areas
07:49 that have been worst affected
07:51 by the social housing crisis in Kent have taken place.
07:55 By speaking to political commentators and council members,
07:58 Gabrielle Sangalete looked for answers to this problem
08:02 that has so deeply affected the county
08:04 and the country at large.
08:06 - Local communities in Kent,
08:08 especially those in Medway and Canterbury
08:10 have been bearing the brunt
08:12 of a severe shortage of social housing.
08:15 Canterbury and Medway have had more families
08:17 waiting for council home than anywhere else in Kent.
08:21 The largest waiting list for council homes
08:23 was found in Medway,
08:24 where there were 3,743 families waiting for a council home.
08:29 I spoke to Stephen Kewel,
08:31 a local political commentator
08:33 who explained to me the mood in Medway.
08:35 - So the houses aren't being built.
08:38 The houses that are being built aren't the right sort,
08:41 and the houses that are available aren't affordable.
08:45 But the issue there is fundamentally
08:47 the lack of local plan.
08:49 So Medway as a unitary authority was formed in 1998.
08:53 Our last local plan was passed in 2003.
08:57 It's 20 years old.
09:00 It's basically a failure of kind of politics, really.
09:05 - Stephen explained to me that Medway
09:07 has not been reaching social housing targets.
09:09 So I asked him what he thinks should be done.
09:12 - You know, they need to pass the local plan.
09:14 There is the new administration say they've got,
09:18 you know, roadmap to have a local plan
09:21 and, you know, hopeful that that will do,
09:23 but the part of the problem with that
09:25 is it needs to make up for the deficit
09:27 of what's gone before.
09:29 So there needs to be clarity,
09:31 so from the government in terms of,
09:34 do these housing targets still exist?
09:37 That's not entirely clear at the moment.
09:39 - I drove down to Medway Council
09:41 and met Labour councillor Leah Mandekaris.
09:44 I asked, is Medway Council aware of this crisis
09:47 and what is being done?
09:49 - Yeah, I think it's a national crisis
09:52 and Medway's will be much larger than the rest of Kent,
09:56 purely because we're so much bigger than the other councils,
09:58 because we're unitary,
09:59 we'll have a much larger weight in this,
10:01 but we're definitely aware that it's a crisis
10:02 and the impact that it has on families who are waiting.
10:06 So, yeah, we're building more council housing.
10:08 We are currently looking at the banding system.
10:11 And so there's a consultation going on at the moment
10:13 for elected members and other council staff
10:15 to input on how they think we should band
10:17 and how we can give the priority
10:21 to the people who are most in need of housing.
10:23 - Councillor Manderekis said that the council
10:25 needs more support from the central government.
10:27 - No, the council is not getting enough support.
10:30 They're not getting enough support on anything,
10:32 that is social housing, children in care,
10:35 everything is crumbling and councils have,
10:37 I think it's 91%, funding cuts since 2010.
10:42 So it means that we don't have the revenue
10:46 to build council houses and we don't have any funds
10:49 to do any of the things we'd like to do.
10:51 We don't like the fact that children and families
10:54 are living in temporary accommodation
10:55 for as long as they are.
10:56 We need support to be able to fix that.
10:58 - The social housing crisis extends as far as Canterbury.
11:02 So we asked local residents if the social housing shortage
11:05 is affecting the county.
11:07 - Certainly affecting their quality of life.
11:09 - Reason, they're mainly renting places,
11:13 so they're not affected by it.
11:14 But I do hear talk in the town,
11:17 well, it's been pretty hard,
11:18 but given that I'm a pensioner now,
11:21 I have had support, so I've been grateful about that.
11:24 - There is a lot where they're building all these houses.
11:28 I live in Elsham and they're currently building
11:29 like over a thousand houses and only 8% of them
11:33 are gonna be social housing, it's just not fair.
11:35 - Gabrielle Sanghalator, CAM TV.
11:38 - Thank you for watching and goodbye.
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