Why is Britain letting 170,000 children grow up without a home?

New data out today shows the number of children classed as homeless is the highest since records began. Alex Firth writes of a nation’s shame

The latest child homelessness figures released this week are nothing short of devastating. Over 170,000 children in England are now classed as homeless, living in temporary accommodation, the highest number since records began over 20 years ago.

To put this in perspective: back in 2004, 120,000 children were in temporary accommodation. By the end of 2010, at the close of the last Labour Government, sustained action had brought it down to below 70,000. Fourteen years of Conservative rule added 100,000 children to that list.

Now, over a year into a Labour government, the crisis is still heading in the wrong direction.

Every one of these children represents a life disrupted: nights spent in cramped B&Bs, weeks travelling miles to school, months without the stability of a home. Behind each statistic lies exhaustion, stress, and trauma. And yet we continue to treat housing insecurity as if it were inevitable, an unfortunate by-product of the market.

This is not just a crisis of policy failure; it is a crisis of rights.

Labour came to power promising to tackle the housing crisis. But over a year in, the scale of child homelessness shows how far those promises have fallen short. Families are still being placed in unsuitable accommodation, often miles away from schools, jobs, and support networks. Councils, underfunded and overwhelmed, are left firefighting rather than preventing homelessness at its root.

‘Housing is not a luxury to be earned or a commodity to be traded. It is a fundamental human right, recognised under international treaties that the UK has signed’ ((Alamy/PA))

Housing is not a luxury to be earned or a commodity to be traded. It is a fundamental human right, recognised under international treaties the UK has signed, including the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

When 170,000 children are denied that right, other rights collapse around them. A child cannot fully enjoy their right to education when they are travelling for hours from a hostel to their school. They cannot realise their right to health when they are living in damp, overcrowded temporary flats. They cannot exercise their right to family life when constant moves tear them away from friends, relatives, and community.

Yet successive governments have failed to embed the right to housing into domestic law. We talk about targets, funding streams, and planning reforms, but we do not talk about the state’s duty to guarantee every child a safe place to call home.

Some will say that numbers like these prove the problem is simply too big to solve. That is not true. We have solved it before. The fall to under 70,000 in 2010 shows that determined government action, combined with investment and strong protections, can make a real difference. What is missing today is political will.

The UK Government must act with urgency and with vision. That means building more homes, stronger renters' rights, adequate funding for councils to prevent homelessness, and crucially, recognising housing and our other economic, social and cultural rights in domestic law.

And there is an immediate test of Labour’s will. In November, the government is due to announce both its Autumn Budget and its child poverty strategy.

If that strategy does not place children’s rights at its heart, it will fail before it begins. Poverty and homelessness are not simply matters of social policy; they are breaches of children’s rights to housing, health, education and a decent standard of living.

The Autumn Budget is a chance for Labour to turn rhetoric into reality, to move from promises to obligations. If they fail to seize it, another generation of children will grow up between hostels and temporary flats.

170,000 children are telling us, in the starkest possible way, that the system is broken.

Because no child should be denied their right to a safe home. No government should be allowed to look away from a rights violation on this scale. And no society that claims to value fairness can turn its back on 170,000 children whose most basic right to housing is being denied.

Alex Firth is the Advocacy and Communications Officer for Just Fair, advocating for everyday human rights in the UK