The UK is facing a housing crisis as more than 150,000 children live in temporary accommodations, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has said.
Official statistics released by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on Thursday showed 151,630 children were living in hostels or bed and breakfasts (B&Bs) as of March.
“We are facing the most acute housing crisis in living memory and homelessness remains at record levels. This is nothing short of a national scandal,” Rayner said in a statement. “Urgent action must be taken to fix this.”
Homeless children in England currently outnumber the total populations of places such as Ipswich (151,565), Blackpool (149,070) and York (141,685), Dave Robinson, the assistant director of operations at housing provider Riverside, told the BBC.
There are more homeless children in temporary accommodations since the program started in 2004, and their number has increased by 15% since March 2023, the government figures revealed.
Bed-and-breakfasts are only meant to house families in an emergency, for up to a maximum of six weeks, but “thousands” of households with children have been there far longer. They are spending “months if not years living out of suitcases,” and “unable to put down any roots,” Polly Neate, chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, told the state broadcaster BBC.
“High use of temporary accommodation is the result of national policy failure which forces councils to expensively deal with the consequences of homelessness rather than prevent it in the first place,” said Hannah Dalton, housing spokesperson for the District Councils’ Network.
Rayner is one of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s deputies and her ministry was reorganized last month from what the previous cabinet called the Department for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities.
The government is currently working with local leaders “to develop a long-term strategy to end homelessness for good,” Rayner said. As part of this strategy, she promised “the biggest increase in social and affordable homebuilding in a generation,” abolishing no-fault evictions, and spending millions of pounds to provide homes for families most at risk.
There was no mention of immigration and the role it might play in the housing crisis. There have been dozens of anti-immigration riots across the UK over the past week, triggered by a mass stabbing at a girls’ dance event in Southport. Starmer’s government has vowed it would “not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” and deploy a “standing army” of officers to crack down on the rioters.