It sounds like today, but it has been happening for nearly 200 years.
Lifelines is a new Justlife report tracing the history of temporary accommodation in England for the first time, from 1834 to 2011.
It shows how the same failures have been allowed to continue under different names, different laws and different governments.
The names changed. The pattern did not.
Temporary accommodation is meant to be a lifeline. But too often, it has become a holding system for people with the least power and the fewest resources.
This report asks why. Not just why numbers are rising now, but why the system keeps producing the same harm.
What you’ll find inside
A history of temporary accommodation from the workhouse to the modern private rented sector.
The roots of out-of-area placements.
How poor standards became normalised.
Why responsibility keeps falling between different parts of the system.
How racialised communities, migrants, single people and families have been pushed into weaker rights and worse conditions.
And what history tells us has to change now.
Why read it?
Because today’s temporary accommodation crisis is not just a numbers story. It is a design failure. Unless we understand how that failure was built, we will keep repeating it.
