More people in Newham have had their homes repossessed this year than in any other London borough, according to a recent charity report.
The damning figure was revealed by Trust for London, which fights inequality in the capital.
For every 1,000 properties in the borough, seven have been claimed by county court bailiffs in the first quarter of 2025.
Newham is an outlier by some margin, with Barking and Dagenham holding the next highest rate on five.
The findings chime with the council's own statistics.
In a two-month span last year, the Town Hall recorded 991 repossession claims per 100,000 households owned by private landlords.
Its Temporary Accommodation Task and Finish Report, published in July, called this a "huge" increase on previous rates, and again was the highest level in the city.
Repossession figures are important because residents who are kicked out of their homes often rely on the council for temporary accommodation.
London is in the midst of a housing shortage, so more repossessions mean more demand for the dwindling number of available properties.
This has a knock-on effect for people like Jane Williams, founder of the Magpie Project, which supports mothers in Newham who have children under five and who have recently been granted refugee status or leave to remain.
“At this stage, they are put into emergency accommodation that can be within or outside Newham," she told the Citizen.
"We have worked very hard with the local authority to decrease the percentage of temporary accommodation that is a hotel or a hostel without access to a kitchen.
“Major pain points for our families include temporary accommodation without furniture, difficulties in getting repairs done, and a lack of information about how long a family will be in temporary or insecure accommodation.”
Williams says the average wait time for a council house is up to 14 years and “there is not a real alternative to temporary accommodation on the horizon”.
“This is especially true given [homelessness charity] Shelter's findings around the racial discrimination against families from a global majority background within the private rented sector.”
Shelter's report, A Fairer Housing System, also published in July this year, found that “Black and Black Mixed heritage applicants faced poor treatment by housing officers, with many reporting feeling overlooked and deprioritised".
It said "some applicants had resorted to code-switching or using White-passing names to avoid racial bias and improve their chances of a successful application".
Williams wants Newham Council to continue housing children in properties with a dedicated kitchen, rather than a hotel or hostel without one. If they are to stay in either of the latter, she said they should not be there for longer than the “legal limit of six weeks”.
Generation Rent, an organisation formed to educate and help renters in England, believes that, on average, families with children live in temporary accommodation for five years or more.
Williams added: “Newham has been building new houses but obviously not at the rate they are needed.”
She is pushing the council to ensure that temporary accommodation is of a decent quality.
“We would also ask that emergency accommodation is furnished as standard. We are part of the wider Better TA initiative convened by Trust for London, which is asking all local authorities to fix the five basics. These include wifi, cooking and laundry facilities, and better information for tenants.”
The Town Hall's Task and Finish Report found that Newham faced high levels of repossession due to a variety of economic issues, and that the “disproportionate number of households in poverty” and was “likely a response by landlords to the Renters’ Rights Bill”.
If passed, the bill would stop so-called no-fault evictions, meaning landlords will not be able to ask tenants to leave without good reason, giving renters more security.
Trust for London also reported that almost half the children in Newham are growing up in poverty.
In a speech to councillors last year, Newham mayor Rokhsana Fiaz said: “One in 20 households in our borough are in temporary accommodation. That’s 6,662 households.
"And it’s nearly double the proportion of any other London borough, triple the London average, and over 10 times the national average.”
Fiaz pointed to high levels of poverty and overcrowding as key reasons for the figures, and said the costs of housing families had risen significantly in the last few years.
To ease the pressure on its budget, Newham Council implemented an 8.99 per cent increase in council tax in April this year.
Mayor Fiaz said back then: “I know times are tough for residents, but this rise ensures we can continue delivering the services that make a real difference in people’s lives.”
Newham still has the seventh lowest council tax in London.
The council's Task and Finish Report recommended a clampdown on illegal evictions and landlords whose properties do not meet the minimum standards.
It also suggested that by July 2026, the council should provide a 10-year plan detailing how it will “mitigate the impact of the housing crisis and the rising number of households in temporary accommodation”.
