\n<\/p>\n
A Labour MP has called for the government to start building prefabricated homes in England to address the \u201cterrible things\u201d happening to a generation of homeless children.<\/p>\n
Dame Siobhain McDonagh, who helped found an all-party parliamentary group aimed at supporting record numbers of families in temporary accommodation after being \u201ccompletely overwhelmed\u201d by the amount of cases in her constituency, said the situation was \u201cdevastating\u201d.<\/p>\n
The number of homeless people has risen steadily over the past few years as Britain faces a shortage of about 4.3m houses. The most recent government statistics show there were 131,140 households in temporary accommodation in England, including 169,050 children, at the end of March. This is the highest figure since records began in 1998, and an increase of 11.8% on the previous year, before Labour took power.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Siobhain McDonagh: \u2018The real solution in the long term can only be building more social housing.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Sophia Evans\/The Observer<\/p>\n McDonagh added that she hoped parliament would urgently process Labour\u2019s flagship renters\u2019 rights bill in an effort to stem the tide of no-fault evictions, a major driver of homelessness. The party was elected on a promise to ban the practice \u201cimmediately\u201d but the bill has not yet been made law more than a year after the election as Labour considers a number of amendments made in the House of Lords. The housing charity Shelter estimates that in England about 32,000 families have approached their local authority for housing assistance following a no-fault eviction notice since last July\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n Research by McDonagh\u2019s group also found that the conditions in temporary accommodation had been linked to the deaths of at least 74 children since 2019.<\/p>\n Speaking before Labour\u2019s annual conference, which is due to begin in Liverpool on Sunday, McDonagh said: \u201cThe truth is, we don\u2019t know how children are being harmed. We\u2019ve got statistics on infant mortality but we are doing terrible things to a generation of children. A lot of the factors, because it was very young children [who died], was access to a safe sleeping space and the provision of cots.<\/p>\n \u201cBeds and bed configuration are a big issue in temporary accommodation. You\u2019ve got parents and children sharing beds, you\u2019ve got siblings sharing beds. Most temporary accommodation is basically furnished and the configuration of beds can often be not suitable for families.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issues of damp and mould growth exacerbate the conditions families already have \u2013 asthma and general bronchial stuff. Obviously, there are consequences to not having access to a kitchen. People rely on takeaways, so obesity is an issue. Temporary accommodation is small, so you\u2019ll have issues with children learning to walk.\u201d<\/p>\n McDonagh said local authorities were obliged to provide cots for children under two but it was \u201cdifficult to know\u201d if this always happened in practice. She added: \u201cSome councils are under immense pressure and the realities of what families get access to and what it\u2019s claimed they get access to are two very different things.\u201d<\/p>\n McDonagh, who has been the MP for Mitcham and Morden in south London since 1997 and served as a whip under Gordon Brown, said she was aware of some homeless families from the south-east of England being accommodated as far away as Scotland and Wales, meaning children\u2019s education is severely disrupted.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cI think there needs to be a mission in the short term to provide more temporary accommodation. People were delighted by the prefabs [built after the second world war] and they outlived their life expectancy. The benefit is you can use quite small pieces of land.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just so desperate. It\u2019s killing councils. They are falling over financially because they just can\u2019t afford the rising costs. I think the renters\u2019 [rights] act will have a big impact because landlords won\u2019t be able to evict people so quickly for no good reason and the chase for ever-higher rents is made more difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cLabour has a problem in the Lords because there are so few compared to the combined forces of the Conservatives, the Liberal [Democrats] and the crossbenchers. It\u2019s really very difficult to get things through the Lords at the moment.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe real solution in the long term can only be building more social housing. I can understand why the government wouldn\u2019t want to spend money on temporary [accommodation], but I think we have to. You wouldn\u2019t choose to do that, but you need something that is quick.\u201d<\/p>\n Since Labour\u2019s general election win, 11,400 households in England have had their homes repossessed by bailiffs following a no-fault eviction order \u2013 an increase of 8% from the previous year. Charlie Trew, the head of policy at Shelter, said: \u201cIf the bill doesn\u2019t pass until 2026, we think that at least 3,000 more households are going to be marched out of their homes by bailiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n Emer Sheehy, a policy manager at Citizens Advice, said the charity was supporting about 100 people a day facing a no-fault eviction \u2013 known officially as a section 21 eviction.<\/p>\n The government says it plans to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament to address the housing crisis in England. However, Hannah Aldridge, a senior research and policy analyst at thinktank the Resolution Foundation, said the \u201congoing fall\u201d in the number of properties given planning permission \u201ccasts doubt\u201d on its ability to do so.<\/p>\n A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: \u201cEvery child deserves a safe and secure start to life, and somewhere to call home.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re investing \u00a31bn in homelessness services this year to get families out of temporary accommodation.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we are banning section 21 no-fault evictions and building more social and affordable homes with \u00a339bn investment, to give families housing security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Labour MP has called for the government to start building prefabricated homes in England to address the \u201cterrible things\u201d happening to a generation of homeless children. Dame Siobhain McDonagh, who helped found an all-party parliamentary group aimed at supporting record numbers of families in temporary accommodation after being \u201ccompletely overwhelmed\u201d by the amount of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1054,1512,166,3626,2801,9816,2077,6085,134,14785],"class_list":{"0":"post-24320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-address","9":"tag-build","10":"tag-children","11":"tag-generation","12":"tag-harm","13":"tag-homeless","14":"tag-homelessness","15":"tag-homes","16":"tag-labour","17":"tag-prefab"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}