LONDON: Britain's homelessness problem has deepened in the last 40 years because of massive cuts in social house-building and steep hikes in house prices, a major housing charity claimed yesterday.

Shelter said in its 40th anniversary report that more than 1 million children are currently trapped in bad housing.

Shelter was created in 1966 in the wake of the public reaction to "Cathy Come Home," a hard-hitting documentary by film director Ken Loach about a young woman's descent into homelessness.

"The number of homeless households in temporary accommodation has soared from 6,400 to more than 100,000 since 1976, while the building of social homes has fallen by 87 per cent over the same period," said director Adam Sampson.

The report also said the number of families without a permanent home had increased by 17 per cent since 1997, when Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party was first elected.

Sampson said that it was a "national scandal" that families are still facing such a situation.

"Since 1960, the price of a loaf of bread has risen six-fold but the average house is over 60 times more expensive to buy," he added. "So much has changed in the last 40 years but, tragically, Cathy has much less chance of coming home than she would have done back then."

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper acknowledged that more needed to be done but insisted that "hundreds of thousands" of children had been taken out of bad housing since 1997.

She said the government acknowledged it had to go further than refurbishing council homes and ending the practice of putting families in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation.

"The next challenge is to get families out of temporary accommodation. We have to recognize that this country has built too few homes for a generation," she said.

"We need to build more social housing, more private housing and more shared ownership to meet families' needs."

Source: China Daily