'We're facing Christmas in a damp, cold caravan'

"This is where we eat all our meals, where the children play, where we watch television and then where two of us sleep. All on one sofabed."

Charlotte Pugmire, her husband Mark and their two daughters have been living in a caravan near Cowes since July.

It is temporary accommodation provided by the Isle of Wight council for the homeless.

Council leader Phil Jordan said it worried him people were living in the wrong type of housing.

"There's no immediate answer but we are working on long term solutions."

Mrs Pugmire said: "It was OK in the summer when we were outside a lot.

"But now we're cramped inside a tiny space most of the time, which is taking a toll on everyone's mental health. It's like living in hell."

She said the only heating is a gas fire in the lounge area, adding: "It's really hard at night now, it's cold and damp in here."

Christmas will be "one we'll remember, for the wrong reasons", she said.

The Pugmire's story is quite common. They were renting privately but then the landlord decided to sell the house and nothing else was affordable.

When they became homeless they were initially put up in a budget hotel.

The caravan they were then given has two bedrooms, one is used by their six-year-old daughter, who is recovering from a childhood cancer and has a weak immune system.

But the travel cot does not fit in the other bedroom, so it needs to be in the lounge which is where dad, Mark Pugmire said he sleeps too.

"Almost everything we own is in here, but there's hardly any storage space so every corner has boxes piled up."

Mrs Pugmire told me they cannot use the shower because the tray breaks through the bottom of the floor.

She believed living in a tourist area made renting more difficult because people know they can get holiday rents in the summer.

"There's such a small amount of socially affordable properties and every time a housing application gets rejected, it means more people end up in situations like this."

Mrs Pugmire said many people think of men sleeping rough when they think of the homeless and do not imagine it will ever be them.

"No-one has any idea what the horror of it is."

Fawn Britton was living in a caravan on the same site. She's officially one of the lucky ones, her and her four children were moved to a two-bed flat above a shop in Shanklin.

But the three younger children share one bedroom and Ms Britton has to sleep on a mattress in the lounge to give her teenage daughter the other bedroom.

Again, there is no dining table or space for her to study for her GCSEs next year.

The flat has no oven or hob. "We're living on tinned vegetables and microwave dinners," she told me. "And a lot of sandwiches."

All four children attend school and nursery in Newport, 10 miles away, so she spends two hours a day travelling to drop them off and collect them.

"All my support network, people who could help me, my family and the children's dad are all in Newport so we're very isolated here."

Her biggest worry is the time she may be left in the flat, because there is no time limit on how long people can be left in temporary accommodation.

The Isle of Wight council said it had 187 families living in temporary or emergency accommodation and used hotels, bed and breakfasts, caravan sites and holiday lets to meet its statutory duty to keep people off the streets.

It is spending an average of £55,825 per week on temporary accommodation.

Leader Phil Jordan said there was a long history of a lack of affordable housing on the Island. "Air B&B is one reason," he said.

But also "personal circumstances" with wages not particularly high in the area.

"There's not enough homes," he said. "But we are working on supporting the building of more affordable homes."

A spokesperson for the government said: "We have inherited a housing system which is broken, which is why we are committed to the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation, and to ensuring our social security system is fair and sustainable."

They added if people felt the accommodation they were placed it was not suitable they could complain to the council and if not satisfied to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

Ms Britton has started that process, Mrs Pugmire has now been told she could be eligible for a flat in the New Year.

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