This Christmas, many children in England will be homeless and will spend the holidays in temporary housing. This is because families can’t afford to buy or rent permanent housing.
In England, a record-number of about 123,000 families, including 160,000 children, are staying in temporary housing. The Independent says, “At least 56,000 primary school children in England will spend Christmas homeless, according to new figures that show that one in nine pupils in some London primary schools don’t have a place to live.”
“That’s having an absolutely devastating impact on their health, their mental health and their education,” Mairi MacRae, head of policy at a housing charity called Shelter, said, according to BBC.
These people are in a situation called temporary accommodations, which is a form of homelessness. They are living in flats and hostels, which are small accommodations. Since many families are living in these shelters, they have to share bathrooms and other spaces with strangers. This leads to the overcrowding of the accommodations.
To prevent overcrowding, a law says that people can’t stay in these accommodations for more than six weeks. But, in reality, families spend more than a year staying there.
Another problem these families face is that they’re located far away from the school, their place of work, and their family members. This requires families to travel long distances to get to these destinations.
To fix this problem, the government promised that they will spend one billion pounds in England to provide better accommodations and to fix the problem of homelessness. Also, they announced that they will build 1.5 million homes in the next five years.
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