Take Jen and her baby daughter in Bristol, whose personal circumstances changed for the worse earlier this year. Jen was due to move into a caravan park offered by a friend, but she had to turn to sofa surfing instead because Covid-19 caused the park to shut down. “The stress was unbelievable and the uncertainty was horrible – especially because I also had my little girl to think of. I just felt so guilty that we had nowhere to go,” she says.

Single dad Mark in Hertfordshire was also forced to sofa surf before being put into temporary accommodation with his six-year-old daughter Macy. “The worst part was being so far from her school,” he says. “I worried about the longer journey making Macy tired. She is super smart and loves school. But the temporary accommodation meant that she didn’t have the space and quiet she needed to rest and recuperate… I was sitting in that horrible room thinking, ‘Are we going to have to spend Christmas here?’ I lost hope; I felt like everyone had turned their backs on us.”

Both families have, thankfully, found permanent accommodation through End Youth Homelessness and Shelter. But sofa surfing is the reality for so many people who are becoming a part of the “hidden homeless”.

Hidden homelessness: why so many people are being forced to “sofa surf” in the pandemic