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Andy Burnham has been warned that an additional 50,000 people in England will become homeless in the next four years without a radical “housing first” agenda of government.
The incoming prime minister’s leadership team is understood to have been briefed on projections, due to be published on Monday, showing the current record levels of homelessness rising 25% by 2030 to more than 230,000 people.
Burnham has promised the “biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period” if he becomes prime minister as expected on 20 July.
He is understood to have told advisers he wants to see a rapid fall in the number of people sleeping rough within months of taking office.
Official figures show the number of people sleeping on the streets in England rose to a record 4,793 last summer, although that is believed to be an underestimate.
When including those sleeping in hostels and other temporary accommodation, the official homeless figure currently stands at more than 180,000 people in England.
In a report due to be published on Monday, the thinktank IPPR North and the charity Crisis warn that the rate of homelessness in England will rise by 25% – equivalent to about 50,000 people – by 2030 without bold action.
It is understood that Burnham was due to write the foreword for the charities’ report and give a speech at its launch but these plans were shelved when he announced his bid for the Makerfield byelection in May.
Zoë Billingham, the IPPR North director, is understood to have been advising the former Greater Manchester mayor in recent weeks and is widely expected to be offered a role in a Burnham government.
The analysis by IPPR North and Crisis, based on government figures, suggests that the number of people owed a homelessness duty by their local authority will rise from 182,540 last year to 231,299 in 2029-30 without radical action.
The report calls for a national expansion of Burnham’s “A Bed Every Night” programme, which aims to provide a bed and personalised support to every person at risk of sleeping rough in Greater Manchester.
It also calls for urgent support for councils to bring long-term empty homes back into use, reducing reliance on expensive and poor-quality temporary accommodation.
It said councils were being “pushed closer to bankruptcy as billions are spent on costly, ineffective temporary accommodation including hostels and B&Bs often charged at high nightly rates. Yet, this system offers neither stability nor a genuine pathway out of homelessness”.
Britain’s rate of homelessness has risen to record levels in recent years due to an acute shortage of social and affordable housing, particularly in London, where housing allowance has not kept pace with soaring rents.
Last year, the UK government spent £3.8bn on homelessness, more than double the amount in 2010, according to the Institute for Government thinktank.
Most of the money is spent on temporary housing, such as hostels and refuges. In 2009-10, councils in England spent £70.3m on temporary accommodation, according to the Local Government Association. By 2024-25, that figure had grown to at least £1.3bn.
Keir Starmer’s government has promised to tackle the problem by building 1.5m homes, including a “generational increase” in new social and affordable homes, by August 2029.
Matt Downie, the Crisis chief executive, said it would be “madness” for ministers to continue “spending billions of pounds trapping people in homelessness and getting terrible outcomes for people”.
Downie said he believed Burnham grasped the scale of the problem and wanted to make it a priority of his government, as it had been in his first term as mayor of Greater Manchester.
He added: “I’ve never seen anyone that is on the brink of being a prime minister even talk about homelessness, let alone have a deep knowledge about how it can and should be tackled.
“This is a completely unique once-in-a-generation opportunity for this country to follow a leader who’s got a real sense of purpose and an evidence-based ideology on how to tackle the problem.”
