Living in temporary accommodation has contributed to the deaths of 104 children in England in the past six years. 76 of them were under the age of one.
Temporary accommodation is killing children.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
This is very sad news indeed. When I wrote a report on homeless children in temporary accommodation I DM’d Giles @nearlylegal.co.uk with a few questions.
In response he asked for my phone number and spent over an hour talking through the complexities of the UK’s housing crisis with me.
When councils say breaking the law is the only way to house vulnerable children, the system is beyond strain.
These are some of the most vulnerable children in the country, yet they are bearing the costs of housing failure.
2d866107-f4ba-408e-9c7e-8c933d69106b.usrfiles.com/ugd/2d8661_1...
📆 In just one week we will be in Geneva for the Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth: A Global Roadmap for a New Economy
Wednesday 22 April - sign up to watch along here: www.eventbrite.com/e...
More than 50 young people who came to the UK to seek asylum have died in the past decade, the majority by suicide.
Our system does not support children and young people enough.
Today, the two-child limit is scrapped.
For years, this policy pushed 109 children into poverty every single day.
This shows change is possible. Now we need sustained action to ensure every child can rely on the foundations of rights they need to live well.
Image shows three people holding up a trans flag. Text reads: Trans Day of Visibility
It’s Trans Day of Visibility today and we’re sending solidarity to all our trans siblings.
At TransActual we will continue being visible and advocating for the rights of trans people, as we do all year round.
To find out more about our work go to: transactual.org.uk/our-work/
#TDOV #Trans
Again, the allegation here has to be left unsaid because the moment you spell it out it makes no sense – to affect the result here the claim needs to be that Gorton and Denton was full of Muslim women who wanted to vote Reform, but were coerced by their husbands into voting Green instead.
Children are children first. Our new briefing sets out reforms designed to centre and protect children in the wake of the government's new asylum and settlement changes: stable status, safe family reunion, fair age assessment and independent guardianship.
www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/stay-informe...
London comes out above every single region in the country for one simple reason: housing.
Renting in the capital is so expensive it is actively producing child poverty. Wealth is extracted through rent while families are pushed into hardship. This is a political choice.
🚨 New figures show that London has the highest child poverty levels in the country with 38% of children growing up in hardship.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
A council evicting private renters so it can buy their homes to house homeless families is late-stage housing policy.
Displacement used to manage displacement. This is what happens when housing is financialised and social housing is gutted.
Blaming migrants turns a housing emergency into a culture war. It shifts anger away from land, wealth, and state policy, and toward people with the least control over the system.
Migrants did not sell off council housing. They did not deregulate renting or turn homes into investment assets. Those were policy choices made by people in power.
Today in 2026, Reform UK are whipping up similar narratives when they demonise migrants being housed in hotels and call for two tier rights to be implemented for social housing.
In the 1960s, Enoch Powell linked immigration to pressure on housing and services, casting racialised communities as the cause of scarcity.
Housing was used to manufacture racial resentment.
This scapegoating has history.
In the 1930s, Oswald Mosley’s fascists exploited housing grievances, claiming “outsiders” were favoured over “native” Britons.
The far right says migrants are causing the housing crisis. It’s a simple story, and the wrong one.
Housing shortages in the UK are political outcomes, not demographic accidents 🧵
Airbnb is restructuring housing markets.
In Cape Town, short-term lets are pushing homes out of reach for residents. When housing is more profitable as a hotel than a home, the right to housing is at risk.
Community-owned housing could shift who controls land and homes, away from speculation and toward people.
But without real scale it risks staying marginal. Transformation over tokenism.
🏠 This goes to the heart of the right to housing.
Safety, dignity and accessibility are not extras. When evacuation plans are inadequate, it shows whose lives are prioritised and whose are treated as expendable.
Read today, Orwell’s housing journalism speaks directly to the housing emergency: squalid living conditions are not unfortunate, they are political choices, repeated whenever housing is denied as a right rather than guaranteed as one.
He notes how “people will put up with anything – any hole and corner slum, any misery of bugs and rotting floors and cracking walls”
Orwell is clear this isn’t accidental.
Poor housing persists because those affected lack power: “Poverty annihilates the future.”
Orwell documents working-class homes shaped by Victorian neglect. They were damp, overcrowded, and decaying, yet treated as normal rather than intolerable.
George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier is a stark account of how housing conditions are used to discipline poverty 🧵
Pleased to have contributed to this work.
Child poverty is not inevitable, it reflects the choices we make about how our systems are designed.
It’s time to embed rights into this design.
“Workers are scratching their heads asking whose side are Labour on, who do they really represent, because it certainly isn’t workers.” - Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham
Tomorrow's wrap-around front page of The National.
This is the human cost.
As the UK Government talks a big game of being ready to join the US and Israel in war, over 150 families are mourning their children.
Their little girls were mostly aged 7-12.
Dear Shabana, I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank. You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to make a perilous crossing on small boats.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division. When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney. As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I filled water tanks and picked up litter. What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country. Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it. It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and croissants to refugees and food parcels. When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas.” She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …
Dear Shabana,
Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.
The Home Secretary makes a case for her reforms in the context of Labour values of contribution, compassion and control.
You have to question whether segregation, insecurity, hostility, and separated families really are that reflective of Labour traditions.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...