Lack of New Council Homes Fuelling Growth in HMO’s in South East Northumberland

The massive growth of homes of multiple occupancy across the South-East of the County is being fuelled by the payments local Authorities must make to the private owners of these homes is, according to a recent Government freedom of information release leeching £1.1Bn from Local Authorities each and every year.

Prior to 2008 when Northumberland was in a pre unitary council two tier era each Council district had to deal with homeless people on its own patch and right up until May 2017 that was generally the case, with Labour from 2013-2017 building hundreds of Council houses in places such as Embleton, Amble, four sites in Blyth and had its development company ARCH modernise and improve homes across the Hirst area of Ashington to aid management of the homeless and those in need in Northumberland.

Since May 2017 the ‘new wave’ of young people who are not in a position to purchase a home and the net effect of the bedroom tax on their parents who have to seek smaller houses from the Council we have seen the number of homeless grow. This scenario along with the length of time it takes the courts to deal with what are seen as lesser crimes the number of people seeking ‘bail hostelling’ has also grown rapidly.

The current Conservative County Council although spinning out more stories about how they are going to do this and that than Hans Christian Anderson on the social housing front, have sat back and done nothing apart from steering young people towards South-East Northumberland and private owners of HMO’s.

People who live near these homes do not like the current situation and are beginning to become extremely vocal against the current rash of houses being converted to rip-off councils and have those in need wandering around their towns daily.