By Eduardo Salgado, candidate for Councillor, North Brixton Ward, Lambeth
Date: April 2, 2026
Category: Local Housing & Money
Right. Let me get this straight.
Lambeth Council keeps telling us they’re broke. £34.3 million overspent this year. They want to hike our council tax by nearly 3%, plus another 2% for social care. They’re talking about £99 million in cuts. Parks. Community groups. The stuff that actually makes Brixton feel like home.
And the reason? Two things: social care, and temporary accommodation.
That second one is the bit that makes my brain hurt.
Because if you walk around North Brixton or the town centre right now, you’ll see the same thing I see. People in emergency housing. Families stuffed into B&Bs. Hostels. Private rentals the council is paying through the nose for.
So here’s my question. The one nobody at the town hall seems to want to answer properly:
Wouldn’t we lessen the debt – by a lot – if we just… gave those homeless people actual public homes? Or housing co-ops? Or community land trust flats?
I’m not being naive. I know it costs money to build or buy places. But what we’re doing now is insane. Paying private landlords three or four times the cost of a council flat. Every single night. For years.
That’s not solving homelessness. That’s renting a debt machine.
The £34m hole we’re digging ourselves
Let’s stay local.
There are 4,400 households in temporary accommodation across Lambeth. 4,400. Every single one of those is a leak in the council’s budget.
A B&B for one family can cost the council over £100 a night. A council flat? Once it’s there, the running cost is a fraction of that. The maths isn’t complicated. It’s just that the people making decisions seem allergic to doing the obvious thing.
Yes, buying buildings costs money upfront. Yes, building social housing takes time. But bleeding out £34m a year on emergency housing isn’t a plan. It’s a panic attack.
What I think we should do:
Stop faffing about. Use compulsory purchase orders on empty buildings. Work with Community Land Trusts. Buy up the places that are just sitting there while we pour cash into private hotels. The debt doesn’t lessen unless we stop paying rent to the very system that caused this mess.
International House, Somerleyton Road, and the same old story
You saw what happened with 49 Brixton Station Road and Canterbury Crescent, right?
They approved 288 homes. Great. 98 at social rent. Fine. But we lost International House. We lost a hub. And people are sick of it.
Somerleyton Road is the same argument dragging on for years. Funding gaps. Developer-led partnerships. Community pressure. Councils saying “we’re trying” while residents say “you’re not trying hard enough.”
I’m not against building. I’m against pretending to build while we keep the real solution – proper council housing and co-ops – on the back burner.
What I think we should do:
The Brixton Neighbourhood Forum is rewriting their plan right now. Good. They need to shove a “Homes First” clause in there. Not homes eventually. Homes now. And co-ops aren’t some hippy dream – they take housing off the market entirely. No landlord. No profit. No spiralling debt. Just people living somewhere stable.
Public safety, street chaos, and why a roof fixes half of it
The new Safe Hub on Windrush Square is decent. First aid. Phone charging. Somewhere to go if you feel threatened. I’m not knocking it.
But let’s be honest. We’ve still got open drug use around Electric Avenue. Anti-social behaviour by Brixton Station. And now the police are talking about Live Facial Recognition again, which – as local councillors pointed out – nobody told the community about. Great for trust, that.
Here’s what nobody says out loud: a lot of this behaviour is crisis behaviour. People aren’t acting up because they’re evil. They’re acting up because they’re sleeping on a mate’s floor or in a hostel or on the street.
Give them a stable home – a real one, with a door that locks and a kitchen that works – and suddenly you don’t need as many police patrols. You don’t need as many Safe Hub interventions. You don’t need facial recognition to watch people who just need four walls and a bit of peace.
What I think we should do:
Stop treating housing and crime as separate problems. They’re the same problem. Put someone in a co-op flat and you’ve just saved money on policing, ambulances, and ASB callouts. That’s not politics. That’s just true.
Fly-tipping, graffiti, and the stuff that makes you sigh
I know you’ve seen the dumped mattresses. The slow graffiti removal. The council wants tougher powers to seize vehicles. Fine. Whatever.
But here’s a thought: people look after what they actually own.
A street full of temporary housing? Nobody knows if they’ll be there in six months. Nobody feels responsible. A street with a housing co-op or proper council homes? Those people garden. Those people report fly-tipping. Those people care.
What I think we should do:
Stop spending money on enforcement and start spending it on belonging. Stable communities don’t dump fridges on the pavement. They don’t need endless clean-up crews. That’s real savings right there.
So yeah. The answer is yes.
Lambeth says they have no money. But they’re finding £34m to burn on emergency housing.
So I’ll ask it one more time:
Wouldn’t you lessen the debt if homeless people in emergency housing were given public homes, housing associations, or co-ops?
Yes. Obviously yes.
It’s cheaper to build or buy than it is to rent a hotel room for five years. It’s cheaper to maintain a co-op than to police a street corner.
They’re about to cut £99m from parks and community support. Don’t cut the parks. Cut the temporary accommodation bill instead.
Give them the roof. Save the budget. Stop pretending this is complicated.
What do you reckon? Should the Brixton Neighbourhood Forum push for this properly? Or am I missing something? Drop a comment below.
#NorthBrixton #HousingCrisis #LambethCouncil #SolidarioGB #JustBuildHomes
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