I saw this from Radio 4 World at One’s Martha Kearney today:
New figures show that nearly 100,000 children are living in temporary accommodation in England after being made homeless. More #WATO
— Martha Kearney (@Marthakearney) September 24, 2015
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Of course voices on the left were jumping all over it pretty quickly:
The consequence of Cameron & IDS' cuts | Homelessness figures: Nearly 100,000 children in England 'homeless' http://t.co/zqy48CoGUC
— Unite the union (@unitetheunion) September 24, 2015
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Nearly 100,000 children are homeless in the 6th richest nation on Earth. This is David Cameron's legacy.
— George Aylett (@GeorgeAylett) September 24, 2015
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Another one of those terrible Tories stories. Kearney said “New figures” but it did sound a bit familiar though. A quick Google search threw up:
- Guardian, 2002: 100,000 children are homeless, Shelter report says
- Telegraph, 2003: 100,000 children are homeless
- Daily Mail, 2004: 100,000 children are homeless<l
The driver for this coverage is these statistics published today.
This chart from the report shows that we have been here before. Homelessness, in terms of households in temporary accommodation was worse than it is now from Q2 2000 to Q4 2009 inclusive. So Labour’s record was very poor. Homelessness was worse in relatively good times than it is now. It is increasing but it would be nice if the BBC could give us some perspective on the driver of these changes.
Phil Taylor 