57,000 London Children Will Be Homeless At Christmas

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 136 months ago
57,000 London Children Will Be Homeless At Christmas

Shelter has launched its Christmas appeal by highlighting the number of children who will be homeless on Christmas Day.

Shelter calculates there will be more than 57,000 children living in temporary accommodation with their families over Christmas. It's a less visible problem than rough sleeping but brings its own problems, which can include families living in hostels and B&Bs, with everyone in one room and limited cooking and laundry facilities. The number of homeless families in London rose 9% over the year to June, and the number living in B&Bs almost doubled to 1,016.

Most of the boroughs also coughed up stats on how many children they had in temporary accommodation over summer. Brent counted 5,957 and Haringey 4,681; if we ignore the City of London (8) as a statistical anomaly, Merton had the fewest homeless children (106). Even though this is a press release for a charity campaign, it still provides an interesting snapshot of the state of the city's housing and homelessness situation. And as rents continue to increase, wages stagnate and housing benefit restrictions are introduced, it's only expected to get worse.

Photo by victorianlondon from the Londonist Flickr pool

Last Updated 12 November 2012