Displaying items by tag: children and families

More than 210,000 children are estimated to be homeless. The Children's Commissioner for England says that, as well as the 124,000 children officially classed as homeless, a further 90,000 are estimated to be ‘sofa-surfing’. Her report tells of families housed in repurposed shipping containers and office blocks, and whole families living in tiny spaces. Councils blamed a £159m funding gap. The report, entitled Bleak Houses, found office-block conversions in Harlow in which over 1,000 whole families live in single rooms barely bigger than a parking space, and shipping containers which are blisteringly hot in summer and freezing in the winter months being used in Bristol, Cardiff and London. The report warns that a further 375,000 children in England are in households that have fallen behind on rent or mortgage payments. This means that thousands more are at financial risk of becoming homeless in the future.