Thousands of children in London are growing up in substandard and uninhabitable temporary accommodation which violates their rights, a report has found.
The report, by Human Rights Watch and the Childhood Trust, found families across the capital are being placed in poor quality and uninhabitable accommodation.
The government is failing in its duty to ensure the right to adequate housing for homeless families, it said.
The situation is due to a combination of reduced funding for local authorities, austerity-motivated cuts to the welfare system, and a lack of affordable permanent housing.
“The government needs to urgently address this hidden aspect of the housing crisis by reducing reliance on temporary accommodation and tackling the issue of housing unfit for families to live in,” said Alex Firth, senior coordinator at Human Rights Watch.
“If the government is really committed to its agenda of ‘levelling up’ every part of the UK, then giving families a safe and decent home to live in should be the foundation of its efforts.”
Between May and October 2021, Human Rights Watch interviewed 75 people, including 33 who were either currently living in, or had recently left, temporary accommodation in various boroughs across London.
People described conditions including toxic mold, cold temperatures, and a lack of adequate space in their temporary accommodation.
These poor conditions constitute a violation of the right to adequate housing and children’s rights to an adequate standard of living, the report said.
The situation is worsened by the fact that some families live in “temporary” accommodation for several years.
One pregnant mother and her three children lived in a studio flat in Lambeth for six months. The room was so small that they all had to share a double bed.
Another woman described how her daughter developed respiratory issues while living in a three-bedroom house in Croydon.
Layla said her youngest daughter, Israa, was six years old when she moved into the house and had no pre-existing health conditions. However, the house had toxic mold and Israa’s bedroom was “the worst room in the entire house, it was unimaginable.”
She developed respiratory issues while living there and was diagnosed with asthma, as well as needing an operation to assist with her irregular breathing.
The number of families in temporary accommodation has increased by 65 percent since 2011.
There were 42,290 families living in temporary accommodation in London in October.
Human Rights Watch is calling on the government to tackle London’s housing crisis.
Part of the problem, Human Rights Watch found, is that the central government reduced its funding to local authorities, by 37 per cent between 2009 and 2019.
“Successive governments have utterly failed to fix the housing crisis,” said Laurence Guinness, chief executive of the Childhood Trust.
“Children are suffering appalling abuses of their rights with devastating consequences for their health, education, and life chances. This report is a wake-up call to the government that this abuse has to stop”
