Call for extra Sandwell homes after rise in demand
Housing bosses in Sandwell said new accommodation was needed to be created to cope with increasing demand, as it emerged the number of residents requesting for places to live was on the increase.
Figures show that in the first two quarters of 2012, 2,265 single people approached the housing officers for urgent help to find homes.
Of the 2,265 a total of 398 were roofless and required urgent assistance with accommodation.
During the first and second quarter of the last financial year a total of 211 roofless people approached the service, a 76 per cent increase on the previous year.
Council chiefs are now expected to approve plans to convert the former Churchvale Rehabilitation and Recovery Centre, in Lowry Close, in Smethwick, into homeless accommodation. It would be run by Sandwell Homeless Resettlement Project and would provide 17 living units.
The report to cabinet member for asset management Councillor Mahboob Hussain states: "It is considered that this accommodation could now be used to meet the increasing needs of vulnerable people in the borough as a homelessness prevention tool, until alternative move on accommodation is found in addition to assisting the local authority discharge its statutory duty to house people in housing crisis."
Councillor Hussain said the number of homeless people who have been approaching local authorities needing urgent accommodation has been increasing across the country.
