Once again, ’tis the season to be homeless – if you’re a CHILD in the UK at Christmas
I used to write this story every bloody year.
Lost track a bit after2020. Back then, 131,000 children were set to be homeless at Christmas. That was a helluva lot more than in 2013, when I wrote my first article based on figures from homelessness charity Shelter. The total then was around 80,000.
Now it’s closer to 139,000.
So the number of children who are homeless in the UK has nearly doubled in 10 years.
I’d call that a Tory policy failure but here’s Shelter’s version:
Nearly 139,000 children in England will wake up on Christmas morning without a place to call home. This is the highest number on record.
Yes, we are outraged too.
Forced to stay in cold shipping containers, badly converted offices, cramped B&Bs (sometimes with six people to a room), or in places where the locks don’t work properly.
This is not a home.
But how did it come to this?
A lack of affordable homes in the UK means the housing emergency is spiralling. More people are struggling in temporary accommodation or being forced onto the streets.
“My first six weeks living in temporary accommodation left me traumatised for life.”
– FashminaThis is unacceptable.
We must act now.
Your donation today could:
answer an emergency call from a family who are facing the fear and uncertainty of being made homeless
help to pay for legal advice to help a family in crisis keep their home
advocate for access to secure and permanent homes for everyone
Your donation won’t be restricted to a single project but will be used wherever it’s needed most to help those fighting for their right to a safe home.
Yes – this is an appeal for financial help, to make life endurable for people like Fashmina – whose words above should chill you as much as they did me.
Get yourself over to Shelter’s appeal page now – and do what you can to help.
And remember it was Tory policies that have traumatised children like Fashmina.
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Last year I commented on one of those estate agent Facebook ads, “do you know the value of your home?” I said “the value of my home is that it keeps me warm, dry, and secure”. It garnered a hell of a lot of likes. There are a huge number of us who do not accept the current fantasy of housing being entirely about financial value. Nobody should be homeless purely to allow the wealthy to make huge profits and so that the merely comfortably off can support their lifestyle through going massively into debt by borrowing against the “value” of their home. It is entirely insane.