Displaying items by tag: temporary accommodation

Shelter states that two-thirds of families living in temporary accommodation (TA) have been there for over a year; some families have lived in TA for more than ten years. TA is usually overcrowded and of very poor quality. Children share beds with siblings or parents, with little to no space for belongings. Youngsters have no room to play safely or even learn to walk. Older children have no privacy, nowhere to do homework or have friends over. Parents struggle to feed their children nourishing meals without suitable cooking facilities, relying on expensive, unhealthy takeaways or what they can heat up with a kettle or a microwave if they have one. Children attend school tired, or late, or hungry; many travel long distances from their TA. Families are cut off from support networks. Families live in limbo. They move frequently. Uncertainty and insecurity hang over them. Their children’s mental health suffers.

Many are made homeless from ‘no-fault’ evictions when their landlord decides to sell. The Government promised to ban these types of evictions in 2019 but has not done so yet. Evicted families are placed in temporary accommodation. On 31 March almost 105,000 households, with over 131,000 children, were in such accommodation (hotels or bed and breakfast). This latest figure is the highest since records began. Sitting outside a hotel in Plymouth earlier this month, the BBC found several homeless families keeping each other company. When people are in temporary accommodation, there is nowhere for them to move to. The root of the problem is lack of housing, exacerbated because local housing allowance rates have been frozen for the past three years. Amid soaring rents, that choice has left much of the country unaffordable for any household needing housing benefit to help pay their rent.