Homeless families given alternative to hotel living

"I had tears in my eyes because it's a new start for my children. It might not be where we need to be at but it's my final stepping stone to my forever home."

Marie, not her real name, is among the record 2,000 Bristol families living in temporary accommodation, costing the city council about £20m a year.

But after three years of being moved between hotels and sharing a bed with her 11-year-old son, she is about to move into a new housing scheme aiming to cut the council's costs while giving homeless families a better place to live.

These five two-bed modular homes in south Bristol were built in a factory by housing association Places For People (PFP), who say this is part of the solution to the temporary accommodation crisis.

Paul Smith, managing director of PFP, says re-purposing pockets of land that are too small to be developed is something being pioneered in Bristol that can now be expanded elsewhere to improve the lives of families and save local councils millions.

For the last two years Marie and her son have slept in the living room of her one-bed flat, owned by PFP.

But she says this is "lovely" compared to the "terrible" seven months she spent being moved from hotel to hotel, including as far as Bath.

"It massively changed all of our lives, our mental health, everything," she says.

"The last seven weeks we were in the hotel, we were being moved every Monday, so I had to take the day off work and my son the day off school.

"We never knew where we were going, we'd pack up all our stuff and wait for an email from the council."

She is now looking forward to moving to her new temporary home.

"It will give us routine, structure for my kids. My son can have a school friend round if he wants… It's going to change all of our lives massively," she says.

"This is still going to be temporary, not my forever home, but it's going to be like a palace," she adds, referring to the fact she is among the 18,000 people in Bristol on the social housing waiting list.

"This place where I'm going, if there was a lot more of that available to people like me, if they put money into things like that instead of forking out for hotels, people's lives would be different too."

The new site in Hengrove provides just five new homes on council-owned land, but PFP estimate the model could be expanded because it costs about £25,000 a year less than putting a family in a hotel room.

Smith says: "This is an amazing win-win because it provides people with much better quality of life and actually saves the council quite a significant amount of money, because temporary accommodation is incredibly expensive."

Despite being built in a factory, which takes about half the time of a normal home, Smith says the modular homes are built to last - for at least 60 years - and are combined with support services.

"My only concern is that we're not doing more of this and PFP would like to do a lot more," Smith says.

"We've got a few schemes across Bristol that we've done in partnership with the council and we hope we can do more here in Bristol and across the country," he adds.

Smith says the main hurdles are the slow planning process and getting access to land.

He says Bristol City Council have been a "fantastic partner", and now PFP is talking to other councils about similar schemes.

"There are 165,000 children in poor quality temporary accommodation at the moment and that shouldn't be seen as acceptable," he says.

"We believe that we have part of the solution to that."

In 2024, Bristol City Council set about finding solutions to reduce the spiralling costs of providing temporary accommodation and getting families out of unsuitable conditions.

This programme has already delivered £13.7m of savings in the last two financial years, with a further £4m expected this year.

Part of this is a pilot scheme to provide 50 modular units on small pockets of council-owned land - similar to what PFP have built.

Barry Parsons, Bristol City Council's housing chief, says he is "really proud" that there are now only one or two homeless families in hotels or B&Bs at one time - compared with around 150 two years ago.

He says the council's efforts mean that despite there being a record number of people in temporary accommodation, the authority is "providing people with better quality of accommodation at lower cost".

"We're using a wide range of innovative approaches to address this crisis and one of the things we're using is modern methods of construction, including modular homes," he says.

"It's really exciting because this is quite new - this is an example of the council really innovating."

"But modular is not the be all and end all, it's part of the story for us," he adds.

Parsons says the bigger story is how they are housing people in temporary accommodation with support services on offer, which could be modular homes, new builds or homes purchased on the open market.

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