Housing crisis
Having a home is a fundamental human need and a human right. The UK has legally committed to respecting this right but government after government has failed to address the issues, leaving too many children and families without adequate and safe homes.
As with many of the other problems we are faced with, it is one which hits the most vulnerable the hardest but which is rippling out across the whole of our society. Increasingly people are unable to buy, or when they can it is with bigger and longer mortgages leaving more and more families struggling in an expensive private renters market.
Children’s lives are being hurt by this now, plus their future chances of secure homes when they grow up look increasingly bleak.
“The right to adequate housing is being violated across Britain…”
“If we deprive people of basic stability on a large scale, what sort of instability will it embed in the fabric of our society in years to come? What sort of physical and mental damage is being done?”
Impact on children and families
It is hard to overstate the impact on children and families of poor and insecure housing. There are stress impacts, direct impacts on health, impacts on ability to do ‘normal’ day-to-day things. Moving can be unsettling, taking children and families away from friends, family and schools as well as their parents away from support networks and jobs.
The 2018 Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK report shows how rising housing costs are a significant part of rising poverty for lower income households with children. So not only are there immediate impacts of poor housing but there are increased impacts of wider poverty as well.
“The housing crisis is a clear child safeguarding issue and action is needed now. We are expecting mothers to protect children from precarious situations. A ‘housing first’ approach would remove many of the dangers.”
The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK (2024)
“…it blights children’s future permanently. Our homes provide the living environment that dictates our future health.”
131, 370 children live in ‘temporary’ accommodation. There’s also another 92,000 hidden homeless, children sofa surfing, mothers who have separated from their children to protect them, and other such scenarios. There are also another 375,000 families on the edge of homelessness.
Source: Shared Health Foundation, Housing and Children’s Health and Social Care
“No child should have to share a bathroom with strangers, eat from foodbank carrier bags on their bedroom floor or share a single bed with their parent or sibling.”
%
Child lacks space to play
%
Arrived at school tired, late or hungry
%
Child often depressed or sad
young people and housing
Children’s hopes of good futures are being seriously harmed by the housing crisis.
“A third of all young people will be renting privately from cradle to grave.”
“A young person in England is 46% more likely to be homeless or at risk of homelessness than a young person in Scotland, 38% more likely than in Northern Ireland and 8% more likely than Wales.”
“The number of families in England and Wales with adult children living with their parents rose 13.6% between the 2011 Census and Census 2021 to nearly 3.8 million….More than 1 in 10 (11.6%) of those aged 30 to 34 years were living with their parents in Census 2021, up from 8.6% a decade earlier.”
“A third of all young people will be renting privately from cradle to grave.”
Causes
Low wages and cuts to benefits combined with hugely expensive housing has created a crisis. The problems are particularly acute for those who do not own their own homes. However, home owners too are impacted too. With longer and larger mortgages, plus with interest rises adding to cost this crisis is impacting more and more people.
Everyone needs a home, and yet national policy is allowing housing to be transferred to the wealthiest.
Deadly housing
Poor standards in housing impact the health of those living there but can even kill. The government is not fulfilling its duties to protect individual’s rights to life. Seven years since Grenfell campaigners are still fighting for accountability, the government to act on inquiry recommendations, and change so that Grenfell can never happen again.
“The fire at Grenfell Tower was a tragedy that should have been avoided. It is the duty of Government to protect an individual’s right to life. By failing to provide the correct regulatory framework, nor to enforce the framework in place, the Government did not fulfil its duty to the people who lived and those who died in Grenfell Tower.”
Equality and Human Rights Commission
Summary of submissions following Phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry (2019)
Image courtesy of @Natalie_Oxford Creative Commons 4.0 international license. The colour profile of the image has been altered from the original.
“It is seven years today since the Grenfell Tower fire. Seven years since 18 children were sleeping soundly in their beds, not knowing they would never make it out. In these seven years we’ve had two general elections, four prime ministers and a relentless, churning cycle of politicians and ministers who claim they care but whose actions say otherwise.”
Years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy almost 10,000 buildings across the UK still have the dangerous cladding.
‘Nowhere to Go’ by Rainbow Collective documents the human stories of people still living with dangerous cladding in Manchester and the damage not only financially but to happiness, mental health and their lives.