Keep your home or celebrate Christmas '“ credit crunch choice for Littlehampton families

Redundancy and spiralling debts have led to a doubling of families accepted as homeless by Arun District Council.

Littlehampton Citizens' Advice Bureau (CAB) and homeless charity HOMElink also report a big increase in people seeking help after getting into trouble with mortgage or rent arrears.

Denny Hayward, service manager for the CAB, said the organisation saw the crisis coming a year ago, long before the credit crunch bit, when it gave a warning to people on budgeting for Christmas.

"I don't know where people will get Christmas from this year," she told the Gazette yesterday (Wednesday). "The priority is to pay your rent and mortgage, to keep a roof over your head."

Arun figures show the number of families declared homeless and in priority need of housing in the six months from April this year was 40, up from 19 in the same period last year.

More in bed and breakfast

During the same time, the caseload of people reporting themselves to the council as homeless jumped from 507 in 2007 to 739 this year, a 45.6 per cent increase.

The council also put more people into bed and breakfast accommodation while their cases were investigated, the total rising from 18 single people and 19 families from April to September last year, to 26 single people and 41 families in 2008, an overall increase of 55 per cent.

Arun has already spent 52,000 on B and B accommodation in just half this year, more than its budget for the whole 12 months, and has now allocated an extra 55,000, together with a further 70,000 on other measures to tackle homelessness.

Frank Hickson, Arun's head of head of housing management, said he thought the worst impact of the credit crunch was yet to come. "There will be a number of households who have never experienced repossessions before, families who bought homes in the mid to late-1990s and have never been threatened in this way before.

"With the reduction in the availability of mortgages, and people coming to the end of fixed rate mortgages, together with the threat of unemployment, it is likely to affect people who in the past would never have thought of approaching the council for help.

Self-employed hit

"We will help as much as we can, but if we do accept people as homeless, we don't have the accommodation immediately available, and it is likely that we will have to put them into emergency accommodation, which comes as a shock to them."

Denny said CAB advisers were aware of a range of factors behind the rise in homelessness, including the effect of the economic downturn on self-employed people, redundancy, higher deposits sought by private landlords and higher fees demanded by letting agents, and mortgage and rent arrears generally.

In the seven months to the end of October, the CAB had 54 cases of people threatened with homelessness, compared with 71 for the whole of last year. The total of those confirmed as homeless now stood at 21 in the same period this year, against 23 for the 12 months to the end of March.

Cases involving mortgage and secured loan arrears for April to October this year total 78. In the year ending March 31, that figure was just 49.

Bankruptcy inquiries totalling 144 have almost reached the full-year figure of 160 to the end of March.

Beth Archer, manager of HOMElink's new homelessness information centre, The Ark, said: "The number of people on our books is going up every day.

"There are a lot more people, with the financial climate the way it is, who cannot afford their rent or mortgage, or are facing repossession."

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