A report has revealed that over 80,000 children face Christmas in temporary housing.

The report, by the housing and homeless charity Shelter, and based on government statutory homeless statistics and interviews with homeless families, also revealed that many women and children are in totally unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation.

There are currently 2,090 families living in bed and breakfast accommodation.

This is the highest figure in almost ten years.

It is also one that no doubt involves illegality on the part of some local councils – under the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) Order 2003 families should only be placed in bed and breakfast accommodation in an emergency and then for no longer than six weeks.

Shelter’s report, like so many before it, has highlighted the squalid, cramped and often frightening conditions families placed in bed and breakfast accommodation are consistently faced with.

Many of these problems are spatial, such as cramped sleeping conditions and shared bathroom facilities, and can leave a lasting physical and emotional legacy.

There is also the problem of placing families in rooms alongside homeless people with chaotic lives and entrenched, complex needs.

Neither group are well-served by bed and breakfast living, and long-term or repeat homeless cases are let down just as badly as families by overburdened local authority homelessness departments.

So it looks like local authorities, who have a duty to protect, are flouting this duty by exposing women and children to environments fused with intimidation, violence and unchecked illegal activity.

It is also pertinent to note that pregnant women fall under the government rubric of ‘homeless families’; a fact that is often overlooked but adds another dimension to an already unacceptable situation.

Another recent report – this one by the housing ombudsman – revealed a retrenchment in good practice among local councils and gave an insight into the human cost of living in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation.

One case reported was that of Kim, who approached her local council for help after losing her home. Kim and her daughter were placed in bed and breakfast accommodation for 24 weeks, during which time they had to share bathroom and kitchen facilities with other families and single homeless men.

Another told of Marianne, who was left in a tiny cramped bed and breakfast room with her four children for almost 20 weeks. During this time Marianne’s 12 year-old daughter attempted suicide and her other children were ‘traumatised by their experiences’.

The latest government statistics reveal that, of the 26,620 single parent headed families placed in temporary accommodation to the end of June 2013, 24,320 were headed by women. Cases such as those of Kim and Marianne are clearly just a snapshot of a grim, shameful reality.

The use of bed and breakfasts is often the subject of opprobrium because of the illegal nature of their prolonged provision to families.

Yet other types of temporary accommodation utilised by increasingly stretched councils are often far from suitable. Homeless applicants in some parts of the country are being placed in unregulated and often far from scrupulous privately run hostels.

And it is not just families being placed in unsuitable temporary accommodation by local authorities.

Young people of 16 and 17 and victims of domestic violence are also being forced into volatile environments in which they are at risk of exploitation and abuse.

One report produced in August by North-East Regional Homelessness Group presented a damning indictment of the temporary accommodation used by local councils.

Stories of sexual exploitation, extortion, unsanitary conditions and theft littered the report, exposing the vulnerabilities of, particularly, single women.

There is a raft of evidence to support the notion that homeless women are particularly and uniquely vulnerable, and are often homeless as a result of current or historic abuse.

There is also evidence to suggest that homeless women placed in mixed sex accommodation have weakened outcomes, not least due to the often very real threat of sexual exploitation or violence.

There appears neither the economic nor the political will to create and sustain suitable homeless accommodation for women and children, or to provide safe spaces for homeless people with drug and alcohol problems.

The statutory homeless have become a commodity for a particularly nasty sub-section of society; private hostel and bed and breakfast owners eyeing the dividends of their occupants’ housing benefit claims, preying on their vulnerability and straightened circumstances.

The government and local authorities continue to display a distinct lack of understanding about multiple deprivation and entrenched poverty, with burdened councils using the cheapest available options in an unregulated and often unethical private sector.

It is worth remembering too that statutory homeless figures merely scratch the surface of the homeless and housing crisis.

To be accepted as statutory homeless is to fit a narrow criteria; a specificity of circumstance that leaves many, particularly those without children, left to sleep on sofas, or on floors, or on the streets.

Recent legislation and government policy has left councils saying they are left with little choice but to use unsuitable temporary accommodation, unable to cope with cost and demand.

Changes to housing benefit, including the ‘bedroom tax’ and overall benefit caps are making people homeless and then, horrifically, unable to be rehoused due to a lack of social housing.

There is also the problem of private landlords, many of whom are reluctant to take on tenants who may have significant shortfalls in rent due to the way Local Housing Allowance is calculated.

A 2012 poll by SpareRoom.co.uk revealed that 59 per cent of landlords advertising on the site were stipulating ‘ no housing benefit tenants’, largely due to the fact that rent rebates in the private sector go directly to the tenant. Many landlords claimed previous experience of tenants not paying on time, or at all, and felt tenants not in receipt of welfare benefits were more ‘trustworthy’.

The shortage or availability of affordable, permanent accommodation is consequently leaving  families ‘parked’ in temporary accommodation for inordinate periods of times.

Although this does not excuse the dereliction of duty displayed in many recent cases, the Housing Minister Kris Hopkins’ response was less than helpful: “The funding we’ve given, and our change in the law to enable families to be placed in suitable, affordable private rented homes, means there is no excuse for councils to breach this.”

Nearly £1 billion has been given to councils to tackle homelessness, help those affected by welfare reform, and tackle rough sleeping.

Setting aside money for initiatives to help councils cope with the massive human fallout of punitive welfare reforms seems, at best, incredibly cynical policy-making.

Devolving power and responsibility to local authorities gives the state a nice get-out clause, but fails to take into account the fact that many local authorities simply aren’t equipped to deal with the deluge of housing-related problems they are now being faced with.

No sense of crisis from Hopkins, though, merely what seems dangerously close to uninformed, conscience-salving philanthropy along the lines of: ‘we have thrown some money at the problem and created some problematic legislation. Be grateful’.

The ‘change in the law’ referred to by the Housing Minister is the Localism Act 2011, which, worryingly, gives authorities the power to place homeless applicants in the private sector without option, allowing them to discharge their duty if the applicant does not agree.

The Homeless (Suitability of Accommodation) Order 2012 has set out guidance for councils concerning when it might be ‘suitable’ to place homeless applicants in the private sector.

Yet the private rented sector remains problematic, and an insufficiently regulated and often dangerous place for vulnerable individuals. Most tenancies in the private sector are short term, and do not provide a sustained solution to the problems faced by many homeless families.

In addition to this, Local Housing Allowance often does not cover full rents and the spectre of the ‘rogue landlord’ has far outlived Peter Rachman.

The problem keeps returning to the same sticking point; the unwieldy and unregulated nature of the private rented sector. Both temporary and longer term providers in the sector need to be regulated and subjected – stringently – to minimum standards.

Local councils need to develop better relationships with private landlords and encourage them to take their responsibilities seriously; not merely to see their property as a pension-substitute nest egg and their tenants as a commodity.

There is always the hope that now white, middle class, young people are priced out of the housing market and increasingly turning to the private rented sector that there might be the political will to start reforming what has become a sprawling, exploitative mess.

It seems doubtful though, and for many people can never replace truly affordable and secure housing.

However, borrowing caps placed on local authorities mean they are unable to build affordable homes. The Chartered Institute of Housing has estimated that lifting the borrowing cap would ‘unlock the construction of 15,000 homes a year’.

A Shelter report estimated that temporary housing was costing, each year, an extra £10 million on additional visits to GPs due to health problems, and an extra £50 million in out of school provision.

And that report was written almost ten years ago.

With NHS budgets slashed and local authorities and charities stretched to breaking point it is left for us to wonder how, in 2013, our society will cope.

We’re not supposed to mention one of the greatest lead balloons in modern policy, the Big Society, yet one can only assume it would inform David Cameron’s response to this mess.

But the rhetoric and policy of our government hasn’t created the civic unity they, at best naively, envisioned.

They have, though, created an environment intended to make communities turn against each other through a trusted cocktail of stigmatisation and neo-Victorian notions of deservedness. They have sought to create an artificial schism between ‘hard working families’ and those who, presumably, deserve to languish in squalid bed and breakfasts, robbed, victimised and assaulted.

In 2007 David Cameron wrote an article in the Guardian about his vision for a country under the Conservative party; a master class in a brand of politicking best described as ‘not-Thatcherism (honest)’.

“No one will be left behind in a Tory Britain” he said.

No one.

Unless they display problems too entrenched to solve with a shallow, pithy sound bite.

We’ll probably leave them behind, and hope the rest of you are too involved in your own nightmares to notice.