England’s ‘broken’ housing system becoming a problem councils cannot avoid

High house prices, soaring rents and benefit cuts are forcing more and more to seek help from local authorities

Bankruptcy, Ernest Hemingway once wrote, comes gradually, then suddenly. For years, England’s dysfunctional housing market was a distant concern for most district councils in the relatively affluent home counties; now, unexpectedly, it is in their faces, out of control and threatening to overwhelm them.

Hastings, a coastal district in East Sussex, has warned it could become effectively insolvent this year as the housing crisis rips through. High house prices, soaring rents, housing benefit cuts, a 120% year-on-year rise in evictions, shortages of social housing and a shrinking, volatile, local private rented sector have created a perfect storm.