Homeless kids

 Councils across England are providing temporary housing for around 120,540 children with their families - a net increase of 32,650 or 37% since the second quarter of 2014. It said the increase equates to an average of 906 extra children every month.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said placements in temporary accommodation can present serious challenges for families, from parents’ employment and health to children’s ability to focus on school studies and form friendships.

Martin Tett, the LGA’s housing spokesman, said: “When councils are having to house the equivalent of an extra secondary school’s worth of pupils every month, and the net cost for councils of funding for temporary accommodation has tripled in the last three years, it’s clear the current situation is unsustainable for councils, and disruptive for families...”

The report said councils need to be able to build more “genuinely affordable” homes and provide the support that reduces the risk of homelessness. This means councils being able to borrow to build and to keep 100% of the receipts of any home they sell to reinvest in new and existing housing, the LGA said. Council leaders are also calling for access to funding to provide settled accommodation for families that become homeless.

Anne Baxendale, director of campaigns and policy at Shelter, said: “Every day we speak to families desperate to escape the dingy, cramped hostel room they’re forced to live in, for weeks if not months, as overstretched councils can’t find them anywhere else. The situation is getting worse as the lack of affordable homes and welfare cuts bite deeper. The Government has the tools to break this cycle of heartache and homelessness. Firstly, they must abandon the freeze on housing benefit that’s denying thousands of families the essential top-up needed to pay for rising rents. And, in the longer term, they must build decent homes that families on lower incomes can actually afford to live in.”

Kate Webb, head of policy and research at housing charity Shelter, told The Independent there has been little Government effort to reverse the trend. "It is completely unacceptable when someone has already gone through the trauma of losing their home to leave them in limbo for months or years in temporary accommodation," she said. "If we had a functional housing system we would not be putting people in such unstable, precarious living situations."