A mother has told of the moment she was evicted with her children as hundreds of thousands of families face losing their homes in the UK, new analysis has revealed.
There were 124,210 families in England facing homelessness in 2024/25, the research from Shelter shows, equivalent to one in every 57 families.
Of these, 70,630 are single-parent households, around one in every 24.
The housing charity adds that there has been a 10 per cent increase in the number of families assessed by their local council as homeless or at imminent rise of homelessness compared to five years ago.
Single mother-of-three Angela Carruthers has been homeless for two years and is currently living in temporary accommodation in Birmingham.
After losing her home of 12 years because the landlord decided to sell, Angela and her children have moved three times. She is now in her third temporary accommodation property after first staying in a hotel miles away from her community.
Angela told The Independent: “You can imagine someone coming to your house on the day you’re going to be evicted and not knowing where you’re going to go.”
“We’re all just in hysterics because we’d lived there for so long and the kids had their friends round there, their school, work was down the school – it was perfect. And all of it got ripped away from us in the space of a couple of hours.”
At the time, her children were eight, 15 and 17. When they arrived at the temporary accommodation the local council had arranged – a hotel, despite knowing six months in advance of Angela’s eviction – it had no electricity or hot water for five days.
“That for a parent, when you don’t know where you’re going to be with your kids, is really petrifying. Because yeah, I couldn’t protect them, I couldn’t support them. That’s my job as a parent but it was completely out of my hands.”
Angela recently faced eviction again, but was able to remain in her current property with the help of Shelter. However the mother has now lived in temporary accommodation for two years, and says she wants to be able to find secure permanent social housing.
“I’ve got no control over anything in my life or in my children’s lives,” she said, “It’s just like they’re playing god with people. They’ve split up my family, stopped my kids from progressing.”
Shelter policy officer Jenny Lamb said: “We are in the middle of a housing emergency that we have been in the middle of for a long time now, and it is impacting millions of people.
“We’re hearing horrific stories of people finding themselves at the sharp end of the housing emergency. Families spending sleepless nights anxious about losing their homes, having to move away from their work, their communities, their children’s schools.
“[It’s] a system that is failing people at every turn. We have a record high private rents and a severe lack of genuinely affordable social housing, and when you combine that with frozen housing benefits which make private renting unaffordable to so many people, then you end up in this absolute emergency.”
The housing charity has called on the government to build more social housing, aiming for a target of 900,000 over the next ten years, up from the current 300,000 pledged.
It has also urged ministers to unfreeze local housing allowances, which set the rate at which housing-related benefits are paid. Rental costs are far outpacing the amount that private tenants can claim in support.
Alongside HSBC, Shelter has launched a campaign to raise awareness of families living in temporary accommodation, and the difficult, often dangerous, situations thousands are finding themselves in right now.
Last month, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner announced plans to build 300,000 new affordable homes, including 180,000 social homes, in the next decade.
