THOUSANDS of homeless people are trapped either on the streets or in appalling accommodation due to a “crippling” shortage of affordable homes — while in London alone almost 90,000 luxury homes stand empty.

In a report released today housing charity Crisis reveal that almost half of homeless people surveyed were still without a home after seeking help from local authorities because no housing was available.

Crisis says that by the end of last year 227,000 households in Britain were experiencing “the worst forms of homelessness — rough sleeping, living in sheds, garages and other unsuitable buildings, sofa-surfing, hostels and unsuitable temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfast.”

But on Saturday property insurance firm CIA Landlord Insurance said in a new analysis that in 10 major towns and cities 130,000 expensive houses were empty — 87,731 of them in London.

The value of the capital’s empty homes is a staggering £130 billion.

The other centres surveyed by the company are Bournemouth, Manchester, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Bradford and Reading, which together have 42,000 empty luxury homes worth £16bn.

The Crisis report, titled “I Hoped There’d Be More Options,” said: “Without enough housing stock, councils are increasingly having to rely on expensive temporary accommodation or push people towards the private rented sector.”

In 1979, the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher introduced “right to buy” legislation forcing local authorities to sell their housing stock to tenants at knock-down prices.

As a result 2.5 million council houses were removed from Britain’s social housing stock.

Many homes ended up in the hands of private landlords who bought them from tenants when they moved on, leaving increasing numbers of former council houses in the hands of profiteering landlords in the private rented sector.

Crisis chief executive Matt Downie said councils were trapped in a loop, spending more on temporary accommodation which keeps people in “limbo” instead of investing in sustainable solutions to end homelessness in the long term.

“It’s shocking that councils are being forced to leave people living in dingy B&Bs infested with mice, while others live at the mercy of being turfed off the sofa onto the streets at a moment’s notice because they do not have enough affordable housing to go around,” he said.

Crisis is calling on the government to set a target of delivering an additional 90,000 social homes each year for the next 15 years, and substantially increase the delivery of social rented housing.

Mr Downie said the government must “get to grips” with building the social homes “we desperately need.”

Chris Norris, policy director at the National Residential Landlords Association, representing the private sector, said that at the heart of the homelessness problem lay a “chronic shortage of housing across the board, including in the private rented sector.”

He said: “It is time for the government to get a grip and work on pro-growth measures to ensure tenants, including those who are currently homeless, can access the homes they need, where they need them."

A spokesman for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “The number of rough sleepers has fallen in every region of England, taking levels to an eight-year low.

“But we know we must go further, so we’re investing £2bn over the next three years to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.”