Homeless families in Birmingham set to benefit from £400m boost

Birmingham City Council plans to buy 300 homes per year to use as temporary and longer-term accommodation.

Funding worth £400m is to be made available to support homeless families in Birmingham.

Birmingham City Council plans to buy 300 homes per year over the next five years to use as temporary and longer-term accommodation.

The number of families in temporary housing rose by 403% between March 2014 and March 2022, council figures show.

Councillor Jayne Francis said the authority was keen to eliminate the use of bed and breakfast accommodation.

"One of the priorities of the housing strategy for 2023 to 2028, which was launched in January of this year, focuses on the delivery of affordable housing across all tenure types in the city," she said.

"This includes alleviating the direct pressures on homeless households and providing suitable permanent and temporary houses for families, especially larger families."

However, councillor Roger Hamer said: "My concern is the problem we've got in the city is we don't have enough housing.

"And what we're talking about here is spending hundreds of millions of pounds buying private housing, [which] doesn't actually change the fundamental problem there."