The new social housing: data shows scale of infant children in temporary accommodation

In 2010, when the Conservatives first came to power, there were 37,940 families with children in temporary accommodation. Now, 12 years later, there are 59,500 – a staggering 56.8% rise.

New data gathered by Inside Housing sheds new light on a particularly upsetting facet of this: the number of infant children without a home and living every night in temporary housing – which in real terms usually means a hotel room often without cooking facilities; a studio flat in a converted office on the edge of town; or a single room in the absolute bottom end of the private rented sector.

Children under five

We asked councils to provide data on the number of families in temporary accommodation with children under five years old. Only 22 were able to provide figures (they are not obliged to record them, but some do for monitoring purposes).

However, among the 22 were several large London boroughs, which meant the figures covered more than 20% of England’s temporary accommodation population.

The results show that 38.6% of households with children in temporary accommodation within this sample had a child under five, with an average of 1.16 children under five in each of these households.

“Everything in your body is screaming at you to make your surroundings safe for your child and you just can’t”

If these figures are representative, they would indicate that 22,976 households with children under five were in temporary accommodation at the time of the most recent snapshot figure, with 26,641 children under five in total. To put this in context, it is roughly equivalent to the number of under-fives in one of England’s larger cities, such as Liverpool, Manchester or Bristol. Or, put another way, it is nearly 900 primary school classes of homeless under-fives.

Why has this happened? Why does it matter? And what can be done about it?

Ms Williams’ Magpie Project operates in Newham – the eye of the storm when it comes to homelessness and temporary accommodation. At the last snapshot, in June 2022, the borough had 4,034 families in temporary accommodation, including 8,363 children – by some distance the most severe crisis in the country.

The figures provided to Inside Housing show that 1,434 of these families had a child under five, with 1,773 under-fives in total in the borough.

The picture Ms Williams describes of life for these families is bleak. “The mothers that we work with are brilliant, brilliant mothers, but they are doing it with nothing,” she says. “There are so many families in hotels with no cooking facilities at all and that just means you can’t nourish your child. You have got a kettle and a sink and that’s it. If your child wants hot milk to go to sleep at night, you have got no fridge.”

This means the mothers are reliant on takeaway food to feed their children: even food banks are of little use with no means to cook the food.

Ms Williams describes one mother who is “a wonderful cook”. “She can cook nutritious, culturally appropriate food for her children,” she says. “But she has to buy them fried chicken in a box, because she is being given no other option. If she was at least in a house with cooking facilities, we could get her to a food bank and she could provide for her children.”

Living in one room, which is often not child-proofed, has consequences for child development.

“There is no room to play or crawl on the floor,” explains Ms Williams. “A lot of the children are strapped into high chairs or buggies for most of the day.”

“We are seeing a lot of flat heads from children lying all day in one position. We are seeing poor muscle tone, because they are lying in buggies when they should be rolling around on the floor,” she says.

“We are seeing a lot of flat heads from children lying all day in one position. We are seeing poor muscle tone, because they are lying in buggies when they should be rolling around on the floor”

With the country recently shocked by the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, who died after being exposed to damp and mould in his housing association home, the housing conditions in these properties are also of major concern.

“These homes are not fit for human habitation. They are full of mould and we see children hospitalised because of mould and damp. There are infestations of mice, bed bugs. Those things are so prevalent, they are everywhere,” she says.

Then there is the cognitive development side. “We see really low engagement, almost like frozen babies who don’t engage and don’t play. What’s really frightening about that is they have really high cortisol levels, so they are really stressed, but they are not crying and not asking for help,” she says.

“We know that the first two years set up a child’s brain chemistry for the rest of their life. So this is really a life sentence. It’s not just about under-fives, it’s about future adults. We are in danger of breaking them before they get built.”

The pressure for mothers is also often close to unbearable: a horrible mix of stress, boredom and isolation, with intense financial pressure and insecurity, combined with a placement in a property that has likely moved them away from any social support networks which might have helped to sustain them.