Debt Trap Nation takes readers inside this national scandal – hundreds of thousands of children living in ‘prison-like’ hotel rooms for months, years and sometimes their entire childhood. The book shows that this scandal is about more than a shortage of housing – it is about the destructive role of problem debt, often ignored in national debates.
Katherine Brickell, Professor of Urban Studies
10 October 2025
New book exposes the “Debt Trap” catching single mothers and children in England
Authors call for systemic reform to tackle cycle of debt and homelessness
Low-income single mothers and their children in England are being caught in a cycle of poverty, debt, and homelessness created not by personal failings, but by systemic state failings.
That's according to a new book, Debt Trap Nation co-authored by King's academic Professor Katherine Brickell.
The books calls for a fundamental overhaul of housing, welfare, employment, childcare, and debt collection.
Launched to mark World Homeless Day, the book argues that Government choices have created a debt trap that is consuming mothers, children and survivors of domestic abuse and is now driving local authorities to bankruptcy.
“It is not women who are failing,” the authors write. “Women are being failed.”
Drawing on three years of research and the lived experiences of mothers across England, Professor Brickell and Dr Mel Nowicki, Oxford Brookes University, reveal how debt is not only a major cause of homelessness but also outlives it – accruing in Temporary Accommodation only to haunt families after moving into so-called ‘permanent’ housing.
"We are a nation in debt," adds Dr Nowicki. "The cost-of-living crisis, austerity, spiralling costs of renting, and the decimation of social housing stock have all conspired to make life harder for all but the wealthiest. For too many families, debt has become a necessity rather than a choice."
The pair say they have been driven to challenge societal discourse on problem debt and poverty – shifting it from one of judgement to one of compassion. Together they call for a harm-reduction-centred approach to policymaking, to dismantle the punitive structures that are eroding the health, well-being and futures of adults and children across the UK.
“Homeless families are being imprisoned in, flung between, and hollowed out financially by political choices out of their control,” they write.
The policy work the authors are pursuing evidences that the housing crisis cannot be solved by building more social homes alone, says Professor Brickell.
"Systemic reform is needed across housing, welfare, employment, childcare, and debt collection."
The authors call for:
- Reform of local authority housing allocation rules so survivors of domestic abuse are never penalised for coerced debt.
- Expanded investment in social housing, alongside the enforcement of Decent Homes Standards in temporary accommodation.
- Scrapping the two-child benefit cap and Right to Buy.
- Increased funding for homelessness prevention and specialist domestic abuse services.
- Practical reforms, from providing cooking facilities in temporary housing to ensuring free transport for children in temporary accommodation.
The book also calls for a re-centering of empathy and harm minimisation in government decision-making - recognising the unpaid and undervalued labour of mothers who hold families and communities together.
Debt Trap Nation: Family Homelessness in a Failing State is available to buy here.
For more on the authors’ policy work visit https://www.debt-trap-nation.org.
In this story
Professor of Urban Studies