Temporary Accommodation

If we find that you are homeless, eligible for assistance, in priority need, not intentionally homeless and you have a local connection to Westminster, we will give you temporary accommodation (TA), while you wait for your permanent home.

These pages tell you all that you need to know about living in TA. Use the links in the left hand column to find out more.

Length of time in TA

Westminster has a severe shortage of permanent homes, so most families spend several years living in temporary accommodation before they are permanently housed.

The average waiting times for homeless households re-housed during 2006 were:

• Studio / 1 bedroom: 19 months
• 2 bedroom: 36 months
• 3 bedroom: 33 months
• 4 bedroom: 88 months
• 5+ bedroom: 81 months
  
  

Reality check

However, the number of of people applying for homes is rising and the the number of permanent homes becoming available is going down. This means the waiting times may continue to rise.

We can't say exactly how long you will wait for a permanent home, but 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 we 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?

• Studio: 3 years 1 month
• 1 bedroom: 2 years 5 months
• 2 bedroom: 6 years 8 months
• 3 bedroom: 8 years 5 months
• 4 bedroom: 12 years 5 months
• 5+ bedroom: 9 years 4 months

Clearly, we cannot close the lists to new applicants. We are adding new people on every day and the lists are growing.

When you move into TA, remember that you will be there for a long time and may not move to permanent accommodation for many years.

Read this information sheet, which shows how many properties we let during 2008 / 2009, plus information such as where these properties were located and how many bedrooms they had.

Current TA population

Currently, there are around 3000 homeless applicants living in temporary accommodation. Many live in East London, because there are not enough properties to go around in Westminster.

The main areas outside Westminster where we have temporary accommodation are:

• Barking & Dagenham
• Newham
• Tower Hamlets
• Waltham Forest
• Hackney

Contact us

If you have a query about temporary accommodation, please contact us at HOS or contact us online.