Ten-year-old Elliot, who is a big Pokemon fan, says he would like to put posters up and decorate his magnolia-coloured bedroom walls.
It’s one of the things he and his four brothers would do if they had a permanent home.
Parents Sam and Jason have been living in temporary accommodation with their five boys for a year now after they were evicted from the house they were renting in Portsmouth.
Like many families, they had to move because the landlord wanted to sell and they couldn’t afford “extortionate” rents when they started looking for a new home.
The local council placed them in a hotel for several weeks before moving them to a three-bedroom house.
The couple say living in limbo is incredibly hard and the uncertainty is distressing for the children.
“It doesn’t feel like a home,” says Jason. “We can’t make this a home because we don’t know how long we are going to be here for.”
They are now one of more than 1,100 families on the waiting list for a council home in Portsmouth. Jason, 49, is a bus driver and says housing in England has become unaffordable for working families like his.
It comes as the government says it is now trying to tackle England’s housing shortage by setting ambitious housebuilding targets for areas like Portsmouth, which could help people like Sam and Jason.
The aim is for 370,000 new homes in England every year, to fulfil a government promise for 1.5m new homes within the next five years. Local authorities are being told to give developers permission to build – and planning decisions will be pushed through by the government if necessary.
But some local councils in England will need to see a five-fold increase in new housing to meet government targets, analysis by Verify suggests.
The has created a new online tool to enable people to track the government’s progress towards its goal where they live.
Portsmouth is one of a number of areas that will need to add more homes in one year than it has delivered in the previous five.
Between March 2019 and March 2024, Portsmouth added a total of 803 homes, equivalent to an increase of just under 1%.
This was the lowest percentage increase in homes of any local authority area in England, according to analysis of housing data.
Portsmouth’s target, set by the Labour government, is to add 1,021 homes a year.
The leader of the council, Steve Pitt says it will be impossible for the coastal authority to deliver that many homes.
He described the target as “stupid and arbitrary” and says it is pointless if there is nowhere to build.
“Portsmouth has a pretty unique geography. Eleven of the 14 wards in Portsmouth are on an island, so we only have a very limited amount of brownfield space,” he says.
“We’ve always tried to explain this to government. They don’t tend to listen.”
Mr Pitt says the most homes the authority will be able to deliver is 800 a year, falling well short of the target.
“It doesn’t matter whether they tell us to build more homes or not, or whether they want to fine us – they won’t be built because there’s nowhere to build them.”
He accepts the area needs more homes and says the government should provide sufficient funding for affordable house building to get plans moving.
At the moment, he says it’s “not viable” for social providers or private developers because they cannot guarantee future rental income will cover the build costs.
Housing is one of the biggest issues for people contacting us through Your Voice, Your News.
Lily, 24, got in touch to say homeownership feels impossible and is “depressing”.
She and her partner Jacob, 24 have two children and say thinking about where they are going to live is a “constant stress”.
In 2023, they were evicted when their landlord wanted to sell the flat they were living in. They are now temporarily renting from a family member but would like their own home.
“All we want is for [our children] to have what we had when we were little, the security of a family home,” says Lily.
Lily and Jacob say there are new homes being built in the area, but they aren’t affordable for families like hers.
To try to save for a deposit, Jacob quit his job in a school and began working nights in a warehouse but he says he doesn’t think there’s “a chance in hell” of saving the £25,000 to £30,000 he says they would need to put down on a property.
The family live in the Gloucestershire town of Lydney.
analysis of official data shows that areas in the South West delivered an average of about 23,000 new homes per year in the last three years.
Government targets suggest they are going to have to increase that amount by almost three-quarters, to 40,000 a year. Some recent local plans have been refused or faced opposition.
It’s many of the London boroughs that face the most significant challenges. Kensington and Chelsea delivered just 245 homes last year. The authority’s target is more than 20 times that; more than 5,000 homes per year.
Zach Murphy, 25, lives at home with his parents in the borough. He says there’s little hope of getting on the housing ladder in London.
He moved back into his parents’ home while studying for his Masters in environmental science.
“The whole reason why I did my Masters was to get a higher paid job. You need that to set yourself up better. If you want to have a family – you need a house.”
Zach has been on the rental ladder before, sharing a home with two friends – each of them paying £1,000 per month. The high rent and cost of living left him with little to save.
analysis has found some outliers in the data. Salford has built more homes in recent years than the government expectation.
Labour’s mayor of the city, Paul Dennett, says most have been high-rise apartments in the city centre and not enough of them have been for those on low incomes.
“The market itself isn’t delivering the level of truly affordable housing. It really isn’t.”
Salford currently has 5,000 households in temporary accommodation. The mayor has committed to building 600 council homes for rent during his five-year term.
Indeed, the council has set up its own business called Derive to build homes that will be for rent only. Tenants won’t be able to buy them.
“Since 1980 we’ve lost over 10,000 homes under right to buy here just in the city of Salford,” Mr Dennett says.
He believes the country needs to get back to councils building homes again rather than relying on the private sector.
He tells us he doesn’t have a problem with the government setting targets – if authorities are delivering “truly affordable housing”.
“We have inherited the worst housing crisis in living memory,” says a spokesperson for the ministry for housing, communities and local government.
“This is why all areas must play their part to deliver 1.5 million homes.”
The government says it has unveiled sweeping changes to the planning system and vowed to override “blockers” standing in the way of building the new homes.
Yet for families like Sam and Jason and Lily and Jacob, owning a home or even renting in the private sector, still feels like an unattainable dream.
Additional reporting by Jade Thompson
About the data
Annual data on new homes for England comes from the government’s “net additional dwellings” statistics.
These figures are estimates of changes in the total number of homes in each area, taking account of new build homes and existing building conversions, minus any demolitions.
The targets are the government’s new “local housing need” calculations, released following a public consultation.
Planning statistics are taken from quarterly data and combine applications decided for “minor” housing developments (fewer than 10 homes) and “major” schemes (10 homes or more).
The planning data for England is at local authority level. Applications decided by special authorities, such as those in charge of national parks, are not included.
We have included the latest data on new housebuilding “completions” by local authority area for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the 1.5 million homes target applies only in England.
Interactive tool developed by Allison Shultes, Scott Jarvis, Steven Connor and Daniel Wainwright
Design by Charlie Colbourne and testing by Preeti Vaghela
