Over 6,000 families in Islington are living in overcrowded conditions.
Around 3,000 families live in overcrowded council housing, and the same number in private rented or in housing association accommodation also live in overcrowded residences without enough bedrooms for everyone in the household.
Bigger estates in the borough, such as Priory Green and Barnsbury Estate, are particularly affected.
The degree of overcrowding varies but at its extreme, people live in ‘severe overcrowding’, which is defined as ‘lacking two or more bedrooms relative to your needs’ . In real terms this means seven people living in a two-bedroom flat, and there are between 250-300 families in the borough living in this state of severe overcrowding.
Pressure for housing in Islington is increasing exponentially as rising populations and prices create demand for appropriate accommodation in all sectors.
Labour councillor for Barnsbury and Executive Member for Housing and Development in Islington, James Murray, stated the need for the council to tackle overcrowding: “We need to build more family-sized homes for social rent, so houses or flats with enough bedrooms, but which are genuinely affordable.”
Islington council have stated their strategy to build more social housing although this falls outside government housing strategy plans.
The council’s programme of council building involves constructing 50-100 new council
homes each year on estates that they own, and to increase housing numbers further as they work with housing associations that have extra capacity. The council offers the housing associations some of its land or money on the condition that they build affordable homes.
Mr. Murray warned of the consequences of overcrowding and of people being priced out of homes and said: “What I don’t want to happen is for London to just be full of very expensive wealthy homes where no one on a low or moderate income can live … Places like Islington are defined by the mix of people, the mix of housing, of everything we have here.”
