Child homelessness is often discussed as a housing emergency. But I have come to think that this framing risks overlooking what is most at stake.

As the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has argued, deprivation is not only about what people lack, but about what people are able to be and do, including within wealthy societies. Poverty, in this sense, is a loss of real freedom. When children grow up without stability, their freedom to learn, to form relationships and to imagine different futures is gradually narrowed.

This is why child homelessness in a wealthy society is not simply a problem of housing supply or crisis response. It is something quieter and more consequential: a slow erosion of children’s life chances, happening largely out of view. It also shapes the lives of parents, undermining purpose, belonging and opportunity in ways that make it harder to break cycles of disadvantage across generations.

Seen through this lens, the scale of child homelessness across the UK warrants attention not only because of its size, but because of its lasting effects on children’s lives. More than 172,000 children in England are now living in temporary accommodation, the highest number on record. In London, around one in every 21 school-aged children is growing up without a permanent home. Across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, smaller absolute numbers conceal a similar level of risk for children: rising and prolonged use of temporary accommodation, with thousands spending critical years of development in conditions defined by uncertainty rather than stability. Different systems exist and different measures are used, but a shared reality has taken root across all four nations: childhoods shaped by prolonged instability, at precisely the point when security matters most. To make matters worse, services remain fragmented across housing, education, health and family support, even though children experience all of these at once.

What’s not in question is that temporary accommodation plays an important ameliorating role: it keeps families safe in moments of acute need. But when stays become prolonged, as they commonly do, this begins to shape children’s lives in ways that are both predictable and deeply damaging. Decades of evidence show that sustained housing instability disrupts early brain development, undermines school attendance and attainment, increases anxiety and depression, and places immense strain on family relationships. The longer instability lasts, the more likely homelessness becomes a repeating pattern rather than a temporary disruption.

This is not just a UK story. Across Europe and North America, rising housing costs, constrained supply and weakened safety nets mean that growing numbers of children experience homelessness or housing instability. While the types of accommodation used vary widely, international monitoring over the past decade consistently shows rising instability across many wealthy countries. 

The good news is that policy attention is turning firmly to this issue. In each UK nation, recent policy developments reflect a growing emphasis on prevention and long-term outcomes for children and families, visible across both homelessness and child poverty agendas. New UK-wide initiatives, such as the Better Futures Fund, reinforce this shift toward place-based, outcomes-focused investment. These are serious commitments, and they matter.

This shift is also reflected in new and emerging expectations on public services to identify risk earlier, before crisis becomes routine. Schools, health services and local authorities are increasingly expected to notice the warning signs of housing instability and act in the round, rather than waiting for families to reach the point of emergency. Together, these developments signal an important change: a growing recognition that child homelessness is not just a housing pressure to be managed, but a long-term risk to children’s development and futures.

And yet evidence and past experience suggest that ambition on its own will not be enough. There is a real risk that new strategies and new funding are layered onto existing systems without significantly changing those systems’ ability to learn, adapt and improve. 

We have not invested sufficiently in the change management, research and development needed to design better responses, test them rigorously, and refine them over time. As a result, approaches that do little to improve children’s lives can persist for years, while more promising ideas struggle to scale. Learning is slow, feedback is weak, and opportunities to improve are missed. If new initiatives are to add up to meaningful change, we need shared learning infrastructure that cuts across places and programmes, rather than sitting within them.

What is needed, then, is a different balance: more creativity, but disciplined creativity; more ambition, combined with a stronger commitment to learning what works, scaling it methodically, and just as importantly stopping what does not.

If children are going to spend months - and in many cases years - in temporary accommodation, then we need to be far more intentional about what happens during that time. But this must sit alongside a clear commitment to reduce the length of stay and, wherever possible, to bypass temporary accommodation altogether. Temporary accommodation should be treated as a critical intervention point, not as a holding space. What happens during this period matters profoundly.

Evidence also tells us something else: the impacts of homelessness are not uniform. Risk accumulates differently at different stages of childhood, and so must our responses. A prevention-led system recognises this, and designs support around children’s developmental needs, not around service boundaries.

For babies and pre-school children, instability undermines sleep, attachment and early learning precisely when development is most sensitive. Approaches that automatically activate additional early years, health visiting and childcare support when housing instability occurs are more effective than leaving families to navigate complex systems alone.

For primary-aged children, school often becomes the last remaining anchor of normality. Yet long commutes, repeated relocations and exhaustion erode attendance and attainment. When schools are enabled to act as stabilising institutions – through transport support, enrolment flexibility and targeted pastoral provision – disruption can be reduced. There is a strong case for automatically activating existing educational support and funding entitlements to schools when homelessness occurs, rather than relying on families to navigate complex eligibility rules at a moment of crisis.

Adolescence presents a different set of risks. Young people living in temporary accommodation often hide their housing situation, disengage from education, or quietly come to see instability as inevitable. Evidence suggests that no single intervention is sufficient, but that combinations of mentoring, aspiration-building and practical support can help sustain engagement when used together. Access to paid work placements, apprenticeships and trusted adult mentors can provide both income and a sense of trajectory, signalling that instability does not define what comes next.

Across all stages of childhood, one factor consistently amplifies impact: parents. Children’s outcomes improve fastest and most sustainably when parents regain confidence, economic security and a credible pathway forward. Time-limited, intensive family support that combines childcare, skills development, financial inclusion and targeted financial assistance can reduce repeat homelessness and improve outcomes for both children and adults.

Seen in this light, child homelessness is not primarily a housing problem. It is a failure of systems to act early enough, learn fast enough and focus clearly enough on children’s futures. When wealthy societies accept prolonged instability as an unfortunate but tolerable condition for children, homelessness does not disappear. It becomes entrenched.

The question, then, is not whether we can manage emergencies more efficiently. It is whether we are willing to invest in the creativity, research and disciplined learning needed to protect the futures of children growing up in instability today. Once we understand the evidence, failing to act is no longer a matter of capacity. It becomes a matter of choice.

• Lígia Teixeira is Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact

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