For my first post under the banner of our new mission to support other tenant activists and campaigns, I want to spotlight a new report that should be read by anyone worried about housing insecurity: JustLife’s ‘A Better Vision for Temporary Accommodation’.
Temporary Accommodation is the home no one actively wants to find themselves living in, but’s the last safety net we’re entitled to if we find ourselves suddenly evicted and homeless. So, we all have a stake in making it decent and dignified.
On Monday, I was lucky enough to attend the Westminster launch event for this report and hear the inspirational lineup of speakers outline the urgency of the change needed to protect homeless individuals and families.
Many MPs were present at the event, including the Paula Barker, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Siobhain McDonagh, Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden and Chair of the APPG for TA, which was great to see. They’re committed to advocating on behalf of families stuck in TA everywhere, and stated they’ll take Better Vision’s recommendations back to the government – meaningful change now needs to follow.
Here’s all you need to know about the event and report:
Who are JustLife?
JustLife provides healthcare, housing and wellbeing support for people who find themselves having to live in temporary accommodation in Manchester and Brighton. It’s also a nationwide learning and advocacy organisation promoting the (apparently not obvious) need to make temporary accommodation short, safe, and healthy.
If you haven’t heard of JustLife before now, that’s probably because you’ve not been faced with living in what passes for Temporary Accommodation (TA) in this country. TA lodgings can be private rental or local authority flats or houses, B&B rooms, hostel rooms, refuges. They are run by a diverse bunch of landlords – council, private and charity – and they’re often bottom of the priority list for maintenance so are in a varied state of disrepair.
TA life and numbers
Some of the conditions that speakers drew attention to in Monday’s event are just horrendous: chronic damp and mould, shared rooms with shared beds, no privacy, no kitchen, and no play or homework space for children.
When I was researching for my book Eviction, I learned that 279,390 people were living in TA by the end of 2023 – pretty much equivalent to the entire population of the city of Nottingham. The majority two-thirds of these statutorily homeless people are women. And one of the main reasons women end up in TA is because of domestic violence, followed closely by eviction. Many women flee with children, and many other TA households are made homeless as family units; Better Vision highlights that today, 164,000 children are living in TA (up 15% in a year).
It was only last year (!) that the government updated guidance to state that cots should be given for homeless families with children under two (a change achieved by advocacy from JustLife, Shared Health and others).
As a recent mum myself, I remember safe sleeping arrangements (i.e. cots, separate space, firm mattress) being drummed into me as a parental care essential from well before my little one was born. It’s listed as one of the safety and care basics alongside feeding and comforting your child. The fact that it took until 2024 for the government to recommend the provision of cots as standard part of a homeless family’s emergency housing package is pretty appalling. (And, I think, a reflection of how few people with experience of TA get to feed into policy-making around TA amenities).
| Leeds TA Stats |
| According to government data, between October and December 2024 there were 670 people in TA in Leeds . Shelter’s research of a ‘snapshot’ of homelessness on one day in Leeds in December 2024, put that number at 806, with 379 homeless children. |
One of the key takeaways from the day was also that the suffering of families in TA is far from temporary. Many end up living in these conditions for years – that’s if they’re not packed off to ‘Out of Area’ placements, torn away from community networks. And the negative impacts of these circumstances can be lifelong.
Lack of cooking facilities and safe play spaces means that children living in TA are suffering from rickets, tooth decay and development delays, as well as severe mental health problems. JustLife’s report highlights that at least 74 child deaths can be linked to unsafe and unsanitary TA since 2019. How many of those individual stories have we seen in the news? How many have led to systemic change in how local authorities provide for homeless families with children? There’s a reason people living in TA are called the ‘hidden homeless’.
JustLife’s Better Vision
The Better Vision report, overviewed by author Morgan Tebbs, presents a range of holistic solutions that sit under four pillars:
- Increase the supply of affordable housing
- Prevent future and repeat homelessness
- Improve standards in TA
- Provide better support for homeless households
It’s deliberately wide because so much of what’s needed to make TA short, safe, and healthy has to come from departments and actors beyond a single landlord. The recommendations won’t be new to the housing insecure, though… many speak to key issues we and others have raised for years, including:
- Create more genuinely affordable homes and stop selling off social and council houses – end Right to Buy! This really doesn’t need explaining.
- Commission research into rent control. As we’ve raised here time and again, private sector rents shouldn’t be allowed to just spiral upwards, well beyond renters’ incomes. High rents force people out of their homes and into TA or the streets.
- Apply the Decent Homes Standard to temporary accommodation (because some landlords need to be forced to apply minimum health and safety standards to TA). Under the Renters Rights Bill, this standard will finally apply to private rental sector homes as well as social – it’s unacceptable that TA is left off that list.
- Improve coordination between councils who are inadvertently switching homeless families through Out of Area placements (yes, that’s right, two councils sending and receiving similar numbers of homeless families moved about like chess pieces).
- Increase the number of housing officers in councils to improve officer caseload numbers (reducing it to a number in the 10s, rather than literally unmanageable caseload of 100s – Morgan spoke of one London council giving an officer around 300 cases to manage) and enhance their training to better deal with trauma-affected people.
There are many more great recommendations in the report, as well as important testimonies of interviewees with lived experience of TA, so do give it a read and support their calls for change.
Activist Women
I recommend checking out the amazing work of the Magpie Project, too. The Magpie Project are an inspirational group of women in London’s Newham, working hard to make sure pre-school children and their mums have somewhere safe and fun to play and grow while in TA.
Magpie’s Change and Advocacy Lead, Gifty Amponsah, was at the event and gave an impassioned and deeply personal speech about the organisation’s current campaign for ‘No Child in a Home Without a Kitchen’.
Too many families, Gifty explained, are placed in hostels without cooking facilities, causing nutritional and developmental crises in children that affect them for the rest of their lives. It should be a basic right for a child to have the comfort and nutrition of a home cooked meal – as Gifty says, this is about supporting the emotional needs met by family cooking and eating, as well as nutritional needs. Read more about their vital work and consider donating, here: https://themagpieproject.org/about/, and you can sign their petition.
Congratulations to all at JustLife – especially Simon Gale, CEO, Christa Maciver, Director of Campaigns & Social Change, and Morgan Tebbs, Influencing Coordinator – for such excellent speeches and the successful launch of an important report (and thank you for including me in the event!).
I hope Better Vision has the impact that people living in TA deserve.
~ Jess
#SaveOurHomesLS26 