On Tuesday at 1pm, Property Matters turns its attention to something that has been building quietly in the background for years. The temporary accommodation system was never designed to carry this kind of weight, yet here we are with families stuck for months, sometimes years, in places that were meant to be stopgaps. Recent reporting from ITV has peeled back the curtain on what this really looks like, and it paints an unsettling picture.

There are now more than 80,000 households with children living in temporary accommodation in England. That figure alone is troubling. What makes it even harder to take in is how many of these families have been living like this for more than half a decade. Something temporary has become the norm for far too many people.

ITV’s investigations, especially from Daniel Hewitt and the wider reporting team, have shown what this means day to day. Families crammed into a single room. Children doing homework on the floor because there’s no table. Parents cooking meals with kettles due to the lack of a kitchen. It’s not the odd case here and there, it’s widespread. Even more worrying are the stories of children who have died in circumstances where their accommodation was found to be a contributing factor. That’s not a system under pressure. That’s a system failing.

One of the hardest truths is that councils are being pushed into decisions nobody wants to make. Some authorities are sending families hundreds of miles away because there’s simply nothing available locally. Others are placing people in hotels with no cooking facilities for months on end because the social housing stock just isn’t there. The pressure on council budgets has become so severe that some are close to breaking point.

This week, we will also be joined by Tiffany Fairbrother, who has experienced the trials and tribulations of temporary housing first-hand. Her story reflects the hidden strain so many families are under, offering a human perspective on what these statistics really mean.

This all feeds directly into the wider housing conversation that Property Matters deals with every week. Professionals across the sector know that housing shortages don’t start with big planning decisions or national targets. They start on the ground with people who have nowhere to go. When private landlords leave the market, when local rents surge, when new social homes aren’t built quickly enough, someone pays the price. And right now, it’s families living out of suitcases in converted rooms and budget hotel corridors.

It’s also worth noting what this means for conveyancers and property professionals. Temporary accommodation pressures often spill into the private market. When councils start competing for the same housing stock as renters, it pushes rents up. When housing associations take on more emergency cases, waiting lists expand. And when households remain in temporary accommodation for years, it signals wider market problems that affect how we think about supply, affordability and future planning.

The uncomfortable truth is that temporary accommodation has now become a long-term solution to a long-term crisis. It isn’t just about homelessness. It’s about a housing system that can’t absorb the pressure placed on it. ITV’s reports have made it much harder for anyone to pretend this is manageable.

On Tuesday at 1pm, with Gareth Wax in the chair, joined by myself, Hamish Mclay we’ll be exploring what this really means across the housing landscape and why the temporary accommodation emergency is a warning sign for all of us working in property. We’ll also look at where things may be heading next and what needs to change if the system is ever going to become genuinely temporary again.

Watch live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SpillingTheProper-Tea
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