The temporary accommodation problem

[Apologies – this post has become inordinately and ironically long.  If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, the headline is: temporary accommodation is a mess with which nobody is capable of dealing]

As we head inexorably down into the election spiral, with all its anxieties, one of the conclusions to which I have been drawn over the years is that housing issues/problems/crises are impervious to political control and election cycles.  Over the years, I suspect it is what has made me a pessimist and, frankly (as you will see below), angry – whatever type of government we have in place, those problems/issues persist and new, unexpected crises emerge.  The way in which we understand the solutions to the problem, or perhaps even identify the problem, may change (hence the current predilection for blaming the planning system); but the issues/problems are stubborn, persistent, and possibly worsening.  Have a look at the report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes in 1881 where issues of property quality and condition, and amount of accommodation, are discussed in detail.  The way in which those issues/problems were thought about then is different from today, but the issues/problems are not far from what we are facing now.

Our housing problems/issues tend to be slow burning.  We can point to a range of interventions which have made things worse, like the right to buy, although for a long time these are commonly lauded and become accepted as part of our housing settlement until they are not.  We can always point to exacerbations of these problems/issues as well, at different times, but these are rarely caused by political faultlines or have simple political fixes.  The current political fix is that we need to build more social housing, but that is (or seems to be) a pipe dream for unconnected reasons (on whch, see previous posts).  Politicians come and go – and in housing, they come and go at quite a rate – and most are trying to do “the right thing” from their perspective, but they can’t really put a dent in the problems/issues.

I was thinking this when reading Will Hayward’s newsletter and the Bevan Foundation report on the increased use of temporary accommodation and its detrimental effects on children, which draws on Shelter Cymru’s evidence. I also have an interest in this area because I am a bit part player in a fantastic team writing up guidance (in England) looking at the use of temporary accommodation for neurodivergent children, something about which I am passionate.

There are 10,933 people in TA in June 2025, of which 2,604 were children, which is a slight reduction from its zenith in 2023.  Just shy of half were living in TA in Cardiff.  There are differences by local authority.  There have been reductions in the use of B&B accommodation but this may be a categorisation problem.  As Bevan suggest, “we are concerned that in some cases this same accommodation may have been purchased by the local authority and instead recorded as their own stock” (which is important because the restrictions on time spent in B&B under the Regs do not apply if it is owned by the local authority).  Bearing in mind the politics of the moment, “Caerphilly was relying on bed and breakfast for 63 per cent of their 93 temporary accommodation placements for families“.

My point is that TA has its own rhythm, which is dependent on the broader housing system and seems to be beyond politics and political solutions.  There is little that our politicians can do about it, unless they want to re-construct that housing system which is (unfortunately) impracticable.  So, you might see this as a failure of the administration but that would, in my view, be myopic.  As they say, homelessness law did and does not result in new accommodation to fulfil the duties (I have suggested in an academic piece about the English statutory changes in 2018 that this is about re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic).  The problem is both in, and broader than, the housing system.  If only we had more, better quality, and affordable TA which we could access …  Readers of this blog (who know their onions) will know that the deckchairs are limited in number, reducing, somewhat broken, and (having just come back from Italy where we had to pay for our deckchairs) expensive to rent.  And, the whole system is, well, like the Titanic.

The Bevan Foundation bring together all the learning  which exists about the devastating effects of the use of TA for children, which we can extend to the most vulnerable and, to use the term commonly used in practice, chaotic.  Some people for whom I act refuse to go in to some types of TA, preferring to sofa surf or live in intolerable but better conditions.  But, the point is that, it is those people at the sharp end of the housing system who are suffering  This has affected whole generations.

To be sure, we can do better, but the solutions are not easy to find or have been tried/thought to have failed, or our minds can’t comprehend alternatives so that we are stuck in the same cycle.  I have been complimentary about Plaid’s housing documents, and I cannot be surer that the Labour government is trying to do the right thing.  The Bevan Foundation’s conclusions (pp 36-7) make for grim reading because they are, in a way, unambitious but that just reflects where we are.  For example, they say that the WG should enforce the B&B rules and that TA should not be provided in accommodation which has Category 1 hazards and that the Code should be amended so that “… no child under the age of two spends a night in temporary accommodation where a cot has not been provided.”  All of that seems pretty basic to me.

But, I don’t know about you, when I read this stuff, it just makes we want to tear down the edifices and rules of our housing system.  TA should not be for private profit; TA must comply with all decent housing standards; TA should not be granted at a premium or market rent; and, if we don’t have it, we should be able to buy it, however much it costs rather than give our public funds to profiteers, Travelodges, and hotels.