Better Temporary Accommodation for Londoners

75,000 households in London are homeless and living in temporary accommodation (TA). As it's name indicates, TA is meant to be temporary. But without affordable housing, many families are stuck in TA for months and years, often separated from their communities. And they're living in conditions that affect their health and wellbeing. 80 children died in TA in 2025, and that number keeps rising.

Better Temporary Accommodation is funded by Trust for London, the Oak Foundation and Impact on Urban Health. The work aims to build consensus to end London’s TA emergency.

Our vision

Together with our partners, we're building consensus around what it will take to end the TA emergency in London. We want every Londoner in TA to have a home by 2035, which is roughly when the current generation of homeless children will leave school. In the meantime, we believe that every stay in TA should be short, safe and healthy. People in TA should be able to live with dignity and have their voices heard.

Why change is needed

For too long it was assumed that the voluntary sector and Londoners living in temporary and insecure housing couldn’t be involved in decision-making. Only a few organisations focused on advocating for and with people in TA. Since 2022 we have been working with them, pushing for the voices of people affected to be heard in policy discussions. We have helped to connect them with the people with the power to make change.

Too many people in TA are living in limbo, far from their work or kids’ school, and not knowing where to turn for help. Local authorities face bankruptcy due to the numbers and cost of finding people places to stay. Landlords are seeing the homelessness crisis as an investment opportunity. That’s not right.

We fund work ranging from the hyper-local to London-wide. And the organisations we fund come together several times a year, to learn from each other and work for an end to the TA emergency.

What we're working on

Better TA: An alliance of organisations acting together to end the TA emergency in London

The Better TA alliance is made up of 20 organisations across London delivering frontline services and support, legal education, research and policy, advocacy and campaigning. Our approach as an alliance is driven by the day-to-day experiences of people in TA.

Alliance partners are the first responders to the TA crisis. We pick up problems, successes, early impacts as well as unintended consequences of policy change, and we have a key role to play in the leadership ecosystem that will bring about change.

Our influencing efforts primarily focus on local authorities and London public sector bodies, seeking to influence what’s possible within the existing legislative framework. We partner with national organisations to feed our insights and evidence into national policy discussions.

We want to end the TA emergency in London. That means seeing people suitably housed in terms of cost, quality and location and the overall numbers reduced. We believe that even short-term measures to tackle the emergency should help drive long-term change that will see our priorities met.

Find out more about the priorities for ending the TA emergency

Working with people with lived experience

For change to happen, people with lived experience of temporary accommodation need to be at its heart. But engaging with people with lived experience needs to be done in the right way, so that it's meaningful and not extractive.

With our Better Temporary Accommodation partners we brought together learnings to create a guide to working with people with lived experience, which informs all of our work on TA.

Read our guide to working with people with lived experience

OPEN FOR APPLICATIONS: Latin American temporary accommodation forum (LATAF)

We're developing two small grants and capacity-building projects - one in Enfield (applications now closed) and the other with Latin American groups in South London.

The projects will bring local groups that work with people in TA together in 'TA Forums'. The work will include a learning programme and support from an expert campaigner to support local campaigns.

The forums are supported by small grants of £5,000-10,000.

Applications for the Latin American Temporary Accommodation Forum (LATAF) are currently open.

Deadline: Applications must be submitted by Tuesday 28 April 12pm.

Find out more / Discubre más