Ulienge Morais and his family are about to move into their seventh temporary home since November 2019.
Their entire life is packed up in cardboard boxes and dad-of-four Ulienge is on high alert as he waits for a call from Lambeth Council telling him where he and his family will be placed next.
Just a few weeks before, the family had received a court order on behalf of the private landlord who rents their current home to the council, telling them they were going to be evicted on Thursday, July 3. Ulienge says the stress and uncertainty of his housing situation has been keeping him up at night and he struggles to fall asleep.
“I stay up just thinking, every day is like this because I need to figure out what I’m going to do tomorrow,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). “The house is full of boxes, boxes and more boxes. How long will I stay here? Any time this phone can ring.”
Ulienge is speaking to the LDRS from his temporary accommodation property in Canvey Island, Essex, where the family have been living since September 2023. In a few days’ time, Ulienge and his wife are throwing a small party so their children can say goodbye properly to the friends they have made in the brief time they have attended a local school in Essex.
In less than six years, two of Ulienge’s children have attended four different schools and have only ever completed one full academic year at each of the schools. Ulienge estimates he spends nearly £700 per month on travel just to to get to his university in North London, while his wife is unable to access the same amount of English language classes in Southend-on-Sea, compared to when the family were living in the capital.
“You can imagine how heartbreaking this is for me, I never had this living in a war-torn country, I never had of any of this,” Ulienge says. “Community is very important when you grow up because tomorrow when my kids reach university and they come back, they won’t have friends [from school]. They will say ‘where are my friends from primary school, where are my friends from secondary school, where are my friends from college?’”
He went on to say: “[My son] is crying because he needs to join secondary school and we’re going to find friendship groups already made, he will need to fight to get into one of them. [My kids] are reaching an age where they are going to look at me one day and say, ‘what’s going on dad?’ They start making friends then they leave, they start making friends then they leave, it’s always like this [every] 18 months.”
According to recent figures from Shelter, there are 164,040 children who are homeless in temporary accommodation, which has increased by 21,650 in a year. Ulienge and his family make up one of 38,690 households nationally who are living in temporary accommodation in another local authority area.
A recent investigation found a postcode lottery in how far from London each borough was placing households in temporary accommodation. Lambeth’s furthest placement was in Walsall, over 120 miles from the borough.
Ulienge and his family have lived in temporary accommodation in Croydon, Purley, Norbury and Bromley and now Canvey Island, which is the furthest away from Lambeth they have lived. During their time in Canvey Island, Ulienge says he has been served two Section 21 eviction notices from the private landlord.
Ulienge says he feels the council has neglected his family and is leaving his case until the last minute. A spokesperson for Lambeth Council later told the LDRS they had been in direct communication with Ulienge for several weeks about his eviction and the plans for moving him and his family before July 3.
Whatever happens, Ulienge says he wouldn’t let it get to the point where the bailiffs come to the property. He said: “Imagine our kids study here, and the families of our kids’ friends and colleagues go to the school [opposite the house]. They [don’t need] the drama and the shame my children will feel seeing their things getting thrown out and everybody seeing that.”
During the LDRS’ visit to Canvey Island, Ulienge received a call from a housing officer informing him they have found him a property in Streatham, which is located in Lambeth. This is later confirmed by the council spokesperson who says they have offered Ulienge alternative temporary accommodation and are waiting for him to accept it.
A few days later, the LDRS catches up with Ulienge, who says he is pleased he will be moving back to Lambeth however he claims the new accommodation is unsuitable for him and his family and is overcrowded. It marks the seventh temporary accommodation property the family have been moved to in under six years.
A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “Lambeth is on the front line of a national housing crisis: the number of homeless households supported by the council increased by 50per cent in the two years to 2025, and Lambeth is now providing temporary accommodation for some 4,700 homeless households every night – at a cost of more than £100million a year.
“We remain committed to providing the most suitable accommodation available to everyone who comes to us needing a roof above their heads. But the acute shortage of affordable accommodation and the rising number of people needing a home means it is not always possible to find suitable, permanent accommodation within our borough.”
They added: “Unfortunately, due to the short/medium term nature of temporary accommodation supply, and the severe shortage of settled accommodation relative to the demand, it is not unusual for homeless households to move several times between temporary accommodation.”
