PEOPLE on Redbridge Council’s housing list could be waiting for as long as 32 YEARS for a property.
The number of people on the list, who include families seeking to move to bigger properties and those waiting to move out of their parents’ houses, currently stands at 13,969.
And according to figures released by Housing charity Shelter this week, some of them could be waiting until 2041 to find a new home.
The figure represents the second-highest waiting time in London. It is more than three times the average waiting time in the capital - 10 years - and even higher than the national average of seven years.
The statistics are based on the amount of people who were rehoused in the financial year of 2008/09 - just 431.
Lucy Davies shares a two-bedroom apartment on the Ray Lodge Estate with her four children – a ten-year-old daughter and three sons aged eight, four and two.
She has been forced to put two sets of bunk beds in one room and has a serious damp problem, which she claims the council has known about for more than four years.
Lucy said: “The council said I would get a new place when my eldest turned eight. Then when that happened, they said I would have to wait until she's ten, and now she is, I still haven't been moved.
“It's really hard for my daughter because she's growing up and starting to become a teenager, so she's always complaining to me and telling her brothers that they're getting in her way. She gets quite emotional about it.
Caroline Davey, Shelter’s deputy director of policy and campaigns, said: “The figures clearly show the desperate lack of affordable housing in Redbridge and how we are simply not building enough homes to meet the growing demand.
A Redbridge Council spokeswoman said: ”The numbers on our waiting list are high due to Redbridge being an attractive and popular place to live and because we have the second smallest social housing stock in London, meaning that we have fewer casual re-lettings per year than almost all other London boroughs.
“The council remains committed to exploring all avenues of opportunity to assist the provision of sufficient affordable housing in the borough.”
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