By Keith Cooper

We need to talk about temporary accommodation. It’s no longer the stopgap it once was. People are now stuck there for years and are increasingly re-housed far from friends, neighbours, and their health and social care support. And it’s no longer just a London problem. Across the country, families feel dumped into woefully inadequate accommodation, including small single rooms with no kitchens for cooking or cots for their babies. Such cramped and at times unsafe conditions stunt child development and were recently linked to 34 child deaths, in very recent research.

If there was ever a good time to re-think temporary accommodation it’s now because the situation looks set to get far worse before it improves. There’s no sign of a surge in the supply of socially rental homes. The number of private rentals is falling in alarming fashion, as landlords demand them back from the councils which lease them. And the Government’s still refuses to raise benefit levels despite recent surges in rental rates.

Seen through the bare lens of supply and demand, the situation seems hopeless. With so many of the forces at play beyond your control is there anything anyone can really do?

The answer, of course, is: yes. Housing has long had to buckle up for fresh challenges. For this one, a good place to start is to rethink the needs of families with children in temporary accommodation. Charities, doctors, and midwives who support them feel children are “invisible” in the housing world and they’ve got a point.

In fact, according to our outdated housing law, “no account” should be taken of “children under the age of one” (let’s call them babies) in the “space standards” that determine the suitability of temporary accommodation. This legal absurdity allows parents with babies to be rehoused in tiny rooms without enough space for a cot.  And there’s plenty of evidence they are, according to the All Parliamentary Group on Households in Temporary Accommodation.

What’s more there is no requirement under law or in guidance that says councils must ensure babies have somewhere safe to sleep, though some, of course, do check. The same law counts children under 10 as “one half a unit”, robbing them of the space they need to play, a vital activity for development in their early years.

Without any legislative demands for space for cots and play, it falls to individual authorities and the landlords they use to act morally, an imperative when work pressure is out of their control.

Manchester Council is one authority to have introduced a more family focused approach. As a result, it has this year reduced from 227 to zero the number of families it rehoused in bed-and-breakfasts, the worst-form of temporary accommodation for children.  It has done this partly by asking mangers to check hundreds of case files a week. You could call this being innovative, creative, or simply good management.

What it does show that there is always “wriggle room” inside a beleaguered housing market and an outdated legal system to rethink your approach and so make a real different to families’ lives.

– Keith has written a larger feature about the temporary accommodation crisis for the latest issue of Housing Quality Magazine, which you can read here.

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To help find solutions to the temporary accommodation crisis, HQN has put together an event to explore ways that local authorities, housing associations and the NHS are working in partnership to address the situation in different parts of the country. The session, scheduled for 6 December, will see Keith Cooper joined by Sam Pratt, SharedHealth Foundation, Rob McCartney, Manchester City Council, Jon Pritchard, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, and Signe Gosmann, Justlife Foundation.

To find out more and book your place, click here.