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TEMPORARY HOMES The Local Government Association has said that there is “a severe lack of social rented homes in which to house families. This means councils have no choice but to place households into temporary accommodation”. The Children's Commissioner, Anne Longfield, who visited some of the estimated 210,000 children affected by homelessness, said ‘it was sad and surprising to learn of the new developments councils were turning to in order to deal with the problem. Office block conversions, in which whole families live in single rooms barely bigger than a parking space, and shipping containers which are blisteringly hot in summer and freezing in the winter months," she said. “It is a scandal that a country as prosperous as ours is leaving tens of thousands of families in temporary accommodation for long periods of time.” Of the 2,420 families known to be living in B&Bs in December 2018, a third had been there for more than six weeks - despite this being unlawful. Polly Neate, Chief Executive of housing and homelessness charity, Shelter, said “no child should be spending months, if not years, living in a shipping container, office block or emergency B&B”. She said the charity constantly heard of struggling families being forced to accept "downright dangerous accommodation" because they had nowhere else to go. Sources , BBC News website and Guardian articles by Partick Butler

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