Hundreds of families with children across Buckinghamshire risk spending Christmas homeless or in temporary accommodation.
The shocking prospect of an insecure Christmas includes tens of Buckinghamshire children.
The most recent figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities show 24,290 households with children received homelessness duties in England between April and June, including 201 Buckinghamshire children.
Director of policy and external affairs at the charity Crisis Kiran Ramchandani said: “Every child should have a safe place to call home.
“Yet with living costs continuing to rise at rapid rates and a severe lack of affordable housing, many families could be forced into homelessness and face spending years living in temporary accommodation.”
More than 120,000 children lived in temporary accommodation in the UK as of the end of June, and 330 of them were in Buckinghamshire.
Kiran urged the government to raise housing benefit and deliver "genuinely affordable" homes, or else risk more families being forced into homelessness this winter.
CEO of Wycombe Homeless Connection James Boultbee said rough sleeping was “never a safe option but when it gets as cold, as it has done recently, it's life threatening.”
During the latest cold snap in December, Wycombe Homeless Connection worked with Bucks Council to give emergency accommodation to around 30 people, who would have otherwise slept rough, he said.
James wanted to ensure the cost of living crisis didn’t turn into a “homelessness crisis for Wycombe and the south of Buckinghamshire”.
“It' is really concerning is that the cost of living crisis appears to be putting more people at risk of homelessness. We are here to help, we are supporting many people who are at risk of losing their homes to help them stay housed if possible,” he added.
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