MPs told of child doing homework on cardboard box amid ‘homelessness tsunami’

Some councils in England are facing a “tsunami” of homelessness as more and more families need help and end up in often unsuitable temporary accommodation, MPs have heard.

A family having been moved seven times to different hotels in just three weeks, and a child doing homework on a cardboard box were among the experiences outlined at a parliamentary committee.

Experts from councils, which have responsibility to help people facing homelessness, and those in the charity sector gave evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on Tuesday.

Committee chairwoman, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi (pictured), said she wanted to ensure “we get this right so we don’t fail a generation of young people” amid current record levels of children living in temporary accommodation.

She said: “We are actively placing young people in accommodation that’s not suitable. So something around the standards and the regulation needs to be looked at, and these are all issues we’re going to continue to discuss, especially with the Secretary of State and her ministers.”

Figures published in August showed a record high of more than 151,630 children living in temporary accommodation in England at the end of March.

A total of 117,450 households were in this situation at that point, some 74,530 of which were households with children.

Both are record highs, according to data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

The figure for households in B&Bs – 17,750 – as of the end of March was 30% higher than the same time last year, while the 5,550 households with children living in B&Bs was up by almost half (44.2%).

By law, B&Bs are meant to be used only for families in an emergency, and for no longer than six weeks, but the figures showed 3,250 households with children had been there for longer than that.

The first day of the committee’s inquiry into the quality of temporary accommodation and pressures on local authority finances in England heard that many councils have faced a “rapid increase” in people coming to them for homelessness help and often been unable to cope.

District Councils Network spokeswoman Hannah Dalton told MPs: “Historically, homelessness has been seen very much as a London or a metropolitan issue. I think for a lot of councils, the very rapid increase in the number of people presenting as homeless, they haven’t been able to pivot fast enough. And I think a lot of councils have presumed at some point it would go back down.

“And it isn’t, and it’s increasing year on year on year, and complexity with it. You know, I mentioned before, you’ve got families, but then you’ve got people with single, complex needs, and then the amount of accommodation available and finding it and having a strategy around it.

“I just think for some councils, it is literally a tsunami that they are now having to get to grips with.”

Dr Laura Neilson, chief executive of the Shared Health Foundation, said there must be a lowest acceptable standard set for temporary accommodation, something she said is “not very clear at the moment”.

She said: “I would like the Government to consider what is reasonable.

“Is a caravan reasonable to bring up your children the middle of January? You know, is a converted office block reasonable? Is moving from one B&B to another B&B to another B&B so that every four or five weeks you move, is that reasonable?

“Is it reasonable – one of the families I saw last week had moved seven times in three weeks through different hotels across the city region, and then the mum had been fined for school attendance. Like, is that reasonable?”

Francesca Albanese, executive director of policy and social change at the charity Crisis, told MPs: “I did some research a while ago, but things have got worse, and that was really, you know, I saw a child doing their homework on a cardboard box.”

Many councils have faced issues with a lack of local accommodation to place people in, and Dr Neilson said she knows of some families being moved “huge” distances away.

She told of families arriving in north Manchester from Camden in London, and one case of a family homeless in Oldham in the North West being sent almost 300 miles away to Hastings on the south coast.

“The distances are huge, but we don’t have a national picture because we don’t collect the data,” she said.

Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner has previously described the record levels of homelessness as “nothing short of a national scandal”.

She has pledged to work across Government and with local leaders to develop a long-term strategy to end homelessness, as well as prevention through an increase in social and affordable homebuilding and abolishing Section 21 “no fault” evictions.

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