How the UK’s Broken Housing System Is Trapping Children in Dangerous, Overcrowded Conditions
The painful truth has been exposed. Homeless children in England are “spending their entire lives in temporary accommodations,” according to a study cited by mainstream media outlet The Guardian. This is what happens when we prioritize the Band-Aid over the cure.
A New Low, or Rather, an All-Time High: Child Homelessness in England Breaks Records
At this point, the UK’s affordability crisis is ripping the region apart. Among its most plentiful victims are also its youngest. Children, toddlers, and infants are among the largest populations impacted by the lack of permanent, affordable housing units.
Once born into poverty, they are forced into cramped, communal facilities, growing up alongside multiple family members in a single room, sharing a bathroom with total strangers, and living in toxic, damp, moldy, and poorly ventilated conditions.
According to BBC News, this is the situation for approximately 151,630 children. All of them are essentially homeless, living in what the government calls “temporary accommodations.” However, new data concludes they are not being transitioned from these bedsits into permanent housing situations. They are being left in these dim, communal settings. They are being left behind.
For Children, Living in a Hostel is Very Hostile
With homelessness surging across the UK, local politicians seem to be taking their cues from city leaders in the US, which means that rather than solving the problem, they are merely shifting it around.
This kind of thing commonly occurs in the form of outdoor homeless encampment sweeps in America. In the UK, the fix is often a bedsit or hostel. The result, however, is eerily similar. It equates to children enduring lifetimes of homelessness, a theme that takes an unfathomable toll on their lives.
For children in England’s crowded B&Bs, experts claim they often suffer developmental delays due to isolation, poor nutrition, and overall subpar living conditions. Some common health and cognitive issues are as follows:
- Inability to walk correctly because they lack the necessary space to move around. One expert described an infant attempting to learn how to walk on a bed because it was the only private space available.
- Inability to potty train due to the hardship of having shared bathrooms and long wait times for using the facilities.
- Tooth decay due to lack of access to bathrooms and dental professionals.
- Skin infections caused by crawling cockroaches and rats.
- Asthma caused by mold and poor ventilation.
School teachers reported poorer hygiene and malnutrition amongst students growing up in “temporary” homeless facilities.
“Seeing children with hyperactivity, behavioral problems, eating disorders, or suffering from depression and anxiety is common in these kinds of communal settings,” Clinical Supervisor Bruce Lockett of Elwyn’s mobile crisis team said in an exclusive interview with Invisible People. “They are either born into or growing up in unsafe environments, staying in places with unfamiliar people who are total strangers and might not have their best interests at heart. This puts them at an elevated risk of being victims of violence or suffering in silence from malnutrition because maybe they do not have a stove, fridge, or cupboards for storage.”
Indeed, according to Inside Housing, 34 child deaths were attributed, at least in part, to unfavorable conditions in temporary accommodations between 2019 and 2022. This is likely a very conservative number, as most child death cases related to temporary accommodations are believed to go unreported.
Some children are managing to survive in these horrifying places, but the delays in cognitive and behavioral health are merely the tip of the iceberg. The delays in transitioning from temporary accommodations to permanent, supportive housing are even more concerning because, lately, that transition is happening very late in life or, in many cases, not at all.
One-fifth of London-Based Homeless Residents Have Been in Temporary Accommodations for Five or More Years
Some families have remained in these living conditions for longer than 20 years. This serves as evidence that the government is treating this abhorrent living situation as a permanent strategy for dealing with homelessness.
Sarah Saadian, the Senior Vice President of Public Policy and Field Organizing for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told Invisible People that policymakers are ignoring the issue.
“I think more people are seeing homelessness in their communities, and they’re putting enormous political pressure on elected officials to take action,” said Saadian. “The problem is that these elected officials aren’t focused on strategies that actually work. Instead, many of them are advancing misguided, cruel, and counterproductive practices that make the problem look like it has disappeared.”
“They care about pretending more than they care about solving the homeless crisis. So, I don’t blame the public,” Saadian continued. “I put the blame on policymakers who owe it to the public to prioritize permanent solutions over political expediency.”
Much like the pallet shelters dotting the shantytowns in America and the factories housing warehouse workers abroad, this is an instance where funds designated to create permanent housing solutions have been siphoned to present the public with a fancy mirage, smoke in a mirror, hiding a lifetime of homelessness.
Clinical Supervisor Bruce Lockett compared growing up in temporary accommodations to being born into slavery because both of these scenarios turn an unbearable situation into “the only kind of life you’ll ever know.”
Babies Are Being Born and Raised into Adulthood in Cramped Rooms Where They’re Forced to Share Bathrooms with Strangers. Tell Your Representatives It’s Unacceptable.
Politicians in England firmly believe that if they can hide the problem of child homelessness behind the closed doors of cramped communal homes, they won’t have to address the affordability crisis. Tell your representatives to prove they support the youth and their futures by making housing a human right for all.