Revealed: homeless children spending entire lives in temporary housing in England

Thousands of families have not found permanent accommodation for more than a decade, according to alarming new research

• Read more: ‘My children never had a place they could say was home’

Some homeless children are now spending their entire childhoods in supposedly “temporary accommodation”, while thousands of families have been housed in it for more than a decade, according to alarming new evidence of a homelessness ­crisis “spiralling out of control”.

One homeless household in London placed in temporary accommodation in 2000 is still there today, according to new research seen by the Observer. Among about 50 local authorities known to have high numbers in temporary accommodation, almost 14,000 households have been in it for more than five years.