Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to be able to speak in this debate, Sir Edward, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), who speaks with more authority than any of us on this issue.

Newham has the highest rate of homelessness in the country. We do not yet know how bad it has got this year, but last Christmas one in every 12 of Newham’s children was homeless. I am going to focus on a few typical cases today.

Let me tell hon. Members about Katie. Katie works on the frontline in our NHS. She has been frantically trying to find an affordable home, but nothing is available. Ever since the last time Katie was made homeless, she has had to rely on her family to house her and her two-year-old, but her toddler was getting older, the situation with her family became harder and this May, regardless of the eviction ban, Katie and her baby were kicked out. They are sofa-surfing to stay off the street and desperate for, in Katie’s words, “somewhere to call home.” What mum does not want that?

Katie tells me that the only temporary accommodation she was offered was in High Wycombe or Leeds, so Katie and her child have sofa-surfed and have had higher risks of infection. They have endured terrible insecurity and our local NHS faces losing a much-needed frontline worker. It is not just Katie; far from it. Many families have remained stuck in temporary accommodation without any sense of security or comfort, and they have been without a true home for horrifying lengths of time. I will give just a couple of my cases from this pandemic year.

A teaching assistant has lived with her children in a damp, noisy, polluted property, for two and half years and counting. A single mum has been living in one bedroom with her four-year-old daughter, with damp and rats, since 2015—five years and counting. A mum has been stuck in a two-bedroom flat with her three children, one of whom is disabled and with complex needs, for eight years and counting. A grandfather has been living in temporary accommodation with his adult children and his granddaughter for 14 years and counting. They are all in temporary accommodation. How much longer?

How much longer do we have to wait for a Government willing to build social housing at scale, who will not pinch pennies from the housing support that keeps our families off the streets. How much longer?