Polly Neate told Liam Halligan how around 300,000 people are living in overcrowded temporary accommodation in Britain
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The chief executive of Shelter has told GB News about Britain's growing problem with homelessness, and not just rough sleepers.
Appearing on Liam Halligan's Money Talks podcast, Polly Neate revealed homelessness problems have increased during the pandemic, and families were among the worst hit.
She told Liam Halligan: “It’s definitely increased due to the pandemic, and that doesn’t just mean people sleeping on the streets.
“It means people in people in bed and breakfast accommodation and emergency shelter housing, people in hostels, B&Bs.
“Of course rough sleeping is the most visible and in some ways the most distressing form of homelessness that’s the tip of a huge iceberg."
Ms Neate hit out at conditions in these properties, which she described as often "damp and unliveable".
She added: “What we’re really looking at is families with children in bed and breakfast.
“You’ve got maybe a mum and three kids in one room all along the corridor and you’ve got a communal shared kitchen at one end, a shared bathroom and toilet at the other end.
“So we are talking about really unliveable, so-called temporary accommodation that people are ending up in for years.
“You know this is a type of homelessness that is very, very real. It’s ruining lives. It’s ruining children, hundreds of thousands of children’s lives.
“People don’t really see it. The kind of 5,000 people or so people who are sleeping rough on any given night, there's 700,000 people at the moment living in overcrowded homes."
