Cardiff City Council proposes to consider whether someone has been deliberately left homeless to access council accommodation in future homelessness claims. Councilors were told at a meeting of Cardiff City Council’s adult and community services committee that the lack of affordable private rented accommodation is the biggest cause of homelessness in the city.

At a meeting on Monday 20 November, members were told that some people are so desperate to be on the affordable housing waiting list that they will deliberately give up their private rented accommodation and pose as homeless. Taking intentionality into account in future applications, where there is clear evidence that someone was left homeless on purpose, is a way that the municipality proposes to reduce the high demand for urban housing.

Other solutions being considered include opening more emergency accommodation and securing more facilities. Chair of the Adult and Community Services Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Rhys Taylor, said the proposal to test intentionality was “very alarming” to him. For more Cardiff news sign up to our newsletter here.

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However, he was told that certain groups, such as people with complex needs, would be exempt from consideration. Legal protections will also apply to those under 21, survivors, families, and pregnant women, unless they are determined to have been intentionally displaced twice within a five-year period.

Linda Thorne, Cardiff Council’s cabinet member for housing and communities, said: “No one wants to leave anyone homeless, but we will look at this message because if we don’t it will continue.” More than 8,000 families are currently on Cardiff City Council’s housing waiting list.

As well as more and more landlords opting to exit the private rental market, the majority of rental homes are priced above Local Housing Benefit (LHA) rates. In a sample of the September 2022 Cardiff market, 98% of rental properties were at least £100 above the LHA, according to data from Cardiff City Council.

Cllr Thorne added: “If you think about it, we have fewer properties available and of those properties only about 25% or 26% go to families on the waiting list. Your wait will likely take years. So they can probably be equally desperate about the conditions if they are overcrowded and if they are… disabled.



Cllr Rhys Taylor said he was concerned about the council’s suggestion of intentionality.

“They may feel so desperate that they believe the only way to get somewhere is to present themselves as homeless. The only way to deal with this and maybe achieve something is to go back to a situation where we are housing people. waiting list if we can manage it.

“But if we continue to increase demand, we will never be able to solve the problem.” The number of homelessness assessments carried out in Cardiff increased by 8.8% between 2021/22 and 2022/23, from 4,215 to 4,588, and the number of households at risk of homelessness increased from 1,695 to 2,006 (a increase of 18.3%) for the same period.

Cardiff City Council’s director of adults, housing and communities, Jane Thomas, added to Cllr Thorne’s comments: “We are certainly not talking about our revolving door of homeless people who may give up their possessions, return to the streets, etc. We are talking about people who give up their properties specifically to acquire property in the city.

“There are some very clear examples of this happening and our staff are watching and are frustrated that they can’t do anything about it when other people really desperately need it on the waiting list. It’s not something we would particularly choose to do.

“This is the message we want to convey to them: that you cannot simply stop paying rent in the private sector to be evicted. Obviously, there are other people who are really struggling to pay their rent, and those are not the people we would look at.”

Other temporary housing

Cardiff City Council already has exclusive use of four hotels to accommodate people in urgent need of accommodation. There are also several temporary accommodation sites, including Briarden in Gabalfa and the gasworks in Grangetown.

However, with the colder winter months on the horizon, the council is considering providing more units, especially as hundreds more people are expected to be at risk of homelessness. There are currently 589 people and 127 families living in Cardiff whose asylum claims must be decided by December 2023.



One of the gas plant’s modular units used as emergency accommodation.

Not all refugees will remain in the city, but the city estimates that 353 single people and 102 families will soon seek housing assistance. Asylum seekers who are denied refugee status do not have the right to apply for public funds. This means they do not have access to social assistance or housing.

Huggard chief executive Richard Edwards said that while the council has no legal obligation to support people who do not apply for public funds, that “doesn’t mean we don’t have a moral obligation as a city”. He said, “If we don’t support these people, where are we as a city?”

Cardiff City Council intends to provide the following additional accommodation for single homeless people during the winter months and beyond:

  • Another hotel will offer 83 units and should be available in November
  • Starting in November, Splott will provide 30 emergency housing units.
  • Additional emergency accommodation to provide 30 units in Grangetown from November
  • Managed Transitional Housing will provide 39 units in Llanishen from the end of December on a phased basis
  • Managed permanent housing to deliver 50 units in Penylan in December 2023 or January 2024

More and more people are leaving their temporary places of residence

Cardiff City Council said in October that getting people out of their temporary accommodation was one of the biggest challenges it faced in tackling the housing crisis. According to the City Council, in August 110 families moved into temporary accommodation and 75 abandoned them.

Administrator Linda Thorne said in October that the city’s severe shortage of affordable housing is a factor affecting the rate of temporary housing transitions. In a presentation at Tuesday’s scrutiny committee meeting, councilors revealed that the average rent in Cardiff is £200 higher than the average in Wales, and there are cases of hundreds of people applying to rent a one-bedroom flat .

The council currently has a team dedicated to working with clients when looking for accommodation in the private rental sector. The municipality said that it was also buying properties on the open market and that by April 2022 a further 120 properties had been leased.

To speed up the transition from temporary accommodation, the council is proposing to call for tenders for private rented accommodation outside of Cardiff and permanent social housing across the city. A Cardiff City Council spokesperson said: “There is now a housing emergency in Cardiff and services are under exceptional pressure.



Hundreds of people are expected to show up at City Hall seeking help for the homeless this winter.

“The municipality has a good supply of transitional housing (almost 1,700 units in total) for homeless families, but the supply is full, with 28 more families housed every month than are housed in permanent homes. The high cost of private rented accommodation in the city has put it out of reach for many people, while owning a home is also out of reach for many.

“The municipality responded to the demand by acquiring four hotels in the city for exclusive use to cater for the large number of families in need, and another hotel for singles will soon be opened. In addition to increasing the number of vacancies, we reinforced homelessness prevention. services, leading to an increase in the percentage of households prevented from becoming homeless.

“We have also increased resources focused on improving the transition from temporary housing. But despite these efforts, growing pressures mean that even more homes will be needed in the coming weeks and months, so people have developed a series of proposed changes to the existing approach to support, as well as plans to increase the number of places. . available.’ All the proposals the Council is considering to tackle homelessness will be considered by Cardiff Council’s Cabinet in December.