Nowhere to call home: Understanding our housing crisis. Living in temporary accommodation

The housing crisis in Wales continues to hit hard, with the record numbers of households in temporary accommodation being clear evidence of its human cost. Latest figures show that one in every 215 households in Wales now live in temporary accommodation. This includes over 3,000 children - nearly six in every 1,000 children in Wales. Local authority services are buckling under unprecedented demand. Whilst temporary accommodation is an important lifeline at a time of crisis, it can never be a place to call home. We often see and hear about the numbers of people in temporary accommodation, but the impact on daily life for those living there is less well heard. In this report, we bring together government statistics, local authorities’ views and findings from Shelter Cymru’s casework to bring to the fore the realities of living in this limbo to give a full picture of temporary accommodation in Wales today. Our intention is to demonstrate why more permanent, affordable and suitable housing is needed to enable people to move on out of temporary accommodation and into a stable, long-term home.