Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand

All London boroughs have a serious shortage of housing and Westminster is no different.

Finding a home in Westminster is difficult, so many people turn to the Council for help. Unfortunately, we also have a serious shortage of homes to offer. In the whole of Westminster, only around 20% of the total housing stock is ‘social housing’. That is, housing owned by the Council or housing associations for rent at low cost to people in housing need.

The massive gap between the supply of homes available and the demand for those homes means that we only offer properties to people in the greatest need. Even then, most people face a long wait before they have enough points and priority to get housed.

Numbers currently waiting  

• Over 3000 homeless households. 
• Over 1400 tenants waiting for a transfer.
• Over 600 in other priority groups.
• Over 5000 households in total!
  

Supply of permanent accommodation

• Between April 2007 and March 2008, we let 1014 properties in total.
• This means we re-housed less than one fifth of the households registered on the waiting list.
• Most people face a wait of several years for their permanent home.

How long will I wait for a home?

It is impossible to say exactly how long you will wait for a permanent home, but we think it is important you get a realistic idea of how long you might wait if you join the list now.

To work this out, we compared the number of people currently on the waiting list, with the number of people housed last year.

If we closed the lists to all new applicants today and continued to let homes at the current rate, how long would it be before everyone had been housed?

2 bedroom
6 years

3 bedroom
7 years 8 months

4 bedroom
27 years 7 months

Reality check

In reality, we can't close our waiting lists to new applicants. We are adding people on every day and the lists are growing.

Many applicants have told us that if they had realised how long the wait for permanent housing would be, they would have been more willing to consider other options when they first applied.