In a significant move to address the rising demand for emergency housing, Kingston Council will lease the entire Kingston Lodge Hotel to accommodate homeless families for the next year.
Starting soon, the council will occupy all rooms of the 66-room hotel, a historic property dating back to 1726, located in southwest London. This decision comes in response to a steep increase in the number of families requiring emergency accommodation, exacerbated by a shortage of rental properties and soaring housing costs.
“Over the past five years, the cost of housing homeless households in the borough has surged by £5 million,” a council spokesperson stated. “We have become increasingly reliant on hotels due to the depleting number of rental properties and escalating costs.”
Kingston Lodge, which had previously catered to visitors of Richmond Park, Coombe Wood Golf Club, and Twickenham Stadium, struggled during the pandemic. In 2021, it was temporarily leased by the Home Office to house migrants.
The hotel’s management approached the council with an offer to rent the entire property at a lower nightly rate than the Travelodge, where the council has been booking rooms. This proposal is expected to bring both cost savings and improved living conditions for the homeless families.
“Although the accommodation is not self-contained, it offers several benefits over the Travelodge,” the council added. “The Kingston Lodge provides amenities such as Wi-Fi, fridges in rooms, and cooking and laundry facilities. It also eliminates the need for households to move rooms every 28 days, which is the current rule with the Travelodge bookings.”
This initiative highlights the council’s ongoing efforts to manage the housing crisis in the borough, with the number of homeless households increasing by 304 between March 2019 and March 2024, leading to a 276 percent rise in costs.
NetRent Comment
Councils all over the UK are housing homeless people in hotels but the reality is that no-one wants to live in a hotel. Hotels are fine for holidays and the occasional overnight stay but they can never be called home.
The fact is that by waging war on landlords government, local authorities and the media are ensuring that an increasing number of people are being forced to live in hotels rather than having a home of their own. Shelter, an organisation hell-bent on hammering landlords, reported that £1.7 billion was spent on housing the homeless year ending March 2023, it is undoubtably more now.
This clearly isn’t working. Until and unless government and local authorities start to work proactively with landlords this situation will only get worse, the bill will get bigger and more people will be living in hotels, whether they are 4 star or not.