Inside the Morecambe hotel where homeless families sleep six to a room
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But for these families, the new year has started much as the last one ended.
‘Normal life’ for them now is on hold, while they temporarily stay in one of the hotels in Lancaster and Morecambe which offers rooms to help the city council out of a housing crisis.
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Hide AdThey cram their whole world into a single hotel bedroom – some of them sleeping up to six family members – with no cooking facilities and barely room to move.


Bathrooms double up as spaces to do laundry and the dishes.
They wash their clothes in the bathroom and hope they will dry as they hang over the shower rail – although with no bathroom window this often means children wearing damp uniforms to school.
Downstairs, the hotel has provided a small kitchen area with fridges, a microwave and air fryer to help the residents provide food for their families.
Without this, it might be a pot noodle using their bedroom kettle.
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In the corner of the ground floor community area is a small play area put aside for the youngest residents, while there’s also a snooker table and TV alongside settees, tables and chairs.
Although not much, it’s an attempt by the hotel to make residents feel as welcome as possible, and one the residents are grateful for.
"These families are ‘existing’ – I cannot say ‘living’ as this is no life,” said Julie Seaton, who runs Melbourne Food Club.
Julie has been trying to help the families forced to live in emergency hotel accommodation since it was brought to her attention before Christmas.
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Families are staying in hotels in Lancaster and Morecambe – the majority of them at Bay Roomz in Morecambe, the former Headway Hotel – while they await permanent rehousing.
They have been placed by a number of local authorities including Lancaster City Council after being declared homeless, but with a lack of properties the councils are forced to resort to hotels to keep the families off the streets.
Among the families staying at Bay Roomz are a mum with two daughters aged 16 and 10 and two sons aged seven and four.
Their two-person hotel room, where they have lived since September, fits two single beds and a pull-out bed squeezed alongside a double.


A family-of-four share another of the rooms.
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Hide AdThe couple’s five-year-old son is autistic while their four-year-old boy is suffering with a vitamin deficiency and suspected rickets.
In another room is a mum and her two sons aged 19 and 21.
She had been living in a tent in Heysham for nine months before getting a room at the hotel.
On the third floor, a disabled woman shares a room with her partner.
With the lift out of order, she struggles to leave the room they have been in for the last nine months.
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A lack of rooms countywide means residents from Preston and Bolton are among those to have been placed at Bay Roomz.
As a result, one couple drive their children to school in Preston each day, before waiting in their car to bring them home again at the end of the day to save on petrol costs.
Nathan and his son Tyler, 13, have been living in a Lancaster hotel due to family issues for several months.
They initially stayed with Nathan’s parents and then a friend before eventually having to present as homeless at the town hall.
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Hide Ad"To be fair they were great and they put us in Lancaster to make it easier for Tyler going to school,” said Nathan, who works as a chef.
“This is a roof over your head and it’s warm and dry but they don’t cram prisoners in like they do us. We feel like we are being treated like cattle.”
Fortunately for Nathan, his hotel has allowed him to buy cooking equipment for his room, meaning he can now provide better meals for his son.
"How do they expect me to feed a 13-year-old with a microwave and a kettle?" he said. “I got an air fryer in the sales so it’s in our bedroom plugged in next to the Xbox, and the other day I was cooking a stew on a slow cooker on the floor next to my bed.
“We are in 2025, people shouldn’t be living this way.”
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Hide Ad“It's very much like it was in Victorian Britain when people lived in doss houses,” Julie said. “Never ever have I seen poverty as I am seeing now.
“Families existing in this way, six people in one room 18x18ft, it's disgusting. If prisoners were made to live like this there would be uproar.
"No privacy for teenage girls when it’s needed. Not another room to send a moody child to calm down in. Not another room for a parent to count to 10 after a row. No room, no place."
Julie said she was left “heartbroken” after seeing one family’s attempt to make their room festive for their children by placing a Christmas tree among the beds in their room.
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Hide Ad"It broke my heart the fact that in the midst of this, hope was there,” she said. “This is all families like this have – each other and hope.
“I went home and cried.”
Julie said families are feeling abandoned once they arrive at the hotels.
"There isn’t a support network for the people here,” she said. “It shouldn’t be down to the voluntary sector to help them.
"They get put in here and are forgotten about.
“If families are going to have to live like this then there needs to be better provisions, a purpose-built place with a laundry and proper cooking facilities.
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Hide Ad“This hotel is doing all it can, the staff go above and beyond, they have been amazing, but at the end of the day it’s a hotel.”
And, surreally, holidaymakers are still able to book rooms to stay in the hotel as paying guests alongside the families.
Christmas decorations and a visit from Father Christmas organised by the hotel were appreciated by the families, and further activities are also planned.
"It’s not ideal by any means but there’s a community spirit,” said Julie.
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Hide AdSultan Experience in Lancaster also helped by cooking food for the families on Christmas Day.
As we leave Bay Roomz, a resident is filling the electric kettle at an outside tap because the scant kitchen facilities in the community area don’t stretch to running water.
“People drive past and stare, they look down at us,” one of the residents said.
"These people are like a dirty secret the council doesn’t want people to know about,” Julie added.
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Hide Ad“But there are families here that work and pay their rent to live here, there’s just no housing available for them.
"And this is just the tip of the iceberg – it’s going on all over the country.”
Morecambe MP Lizzi Collinge said: “Some of the most distressing casework I deal with is families left without a home, including children with disabilities forced to stay in unsuitable temporary accommodation.
"It is absolutely heartbreaking to see my constituents unable to find a permanent home. I find particularly worrying the lack of access to proper kitchen facilities and the overcrowded conditions that affect kids’ ability to both study and relax.
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Hide Ad“It is a national disgrace that more than 123,000 households live in temporary accommodation. This has been a building crisis over the last 14 years and I am glad that action is finally being taken.
“I regularly write on behalf of constituents who are in temporary accommodation but there is simply not enough housing to go around and landlords have too much power to evict families to hike rent to unsustainable levels.
“Whilst there are no easy fixes, the measures announced by the Labour Government just before Christmas to increase investment in preventing and fixing homelessness to £1bn will start to ease the crisis whilst we fix the foundations.
“Through the Renter’s Rights Bill the Government is stopping ‘no fault’ evictions, immediately putting an end to one of the leading causes of homelessness, whilst we are also delivering the biggest increase in social housing in a generation, to give families a better route to a secure home.
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Hide Ad“Additionally, councils will also be able to keep 100 per cent of receipts from all Right to Buy sales, enabling them to re-invest in more social housing available for families whilst more private accommodation will be available through the ambitious national housebuilding programme.”
Coun Caroline Jackson, leader of Lancaster City Council and cabinet member with responsibility for homelessness and housing, said: “The situation for homeless people and especially for families who are living in temporary hotel accommodation is of great concern to us.
“This is a national problem which has developed over several years mainly due to the rise in evictions and the cost-of-living crisis which has left families unable to afford what scarce accommodation there is available.
“The council especially recognises the impact the situation is having on the physical and mental health and wellbeing of those affected as well as on children's education.
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Hide Ad“As a council, we have successfully utilised self-contained accommodation wherever we could, meaning that 17 families are living in more appropriate accommodation instead of unsuitable hotel accommodation whilst they await permanent rehousing.
“We will continue to use this strategy with the aim of only using hotels for very short spells whilst we find suitable sized housing for those finding themselves homeless in the Lancaster district.
“We recognise that hotel provision is not suitable in the long term but work closely with other agencies and the third sector to make sure residents are as supported as possible whilst they await rehousing.
“We know that other councils even more pressed than us use hotel accommodation in Morecambe to accommodate homeless residents.
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Hide Ad“Our hearts go out to anyone who finds themselves in this difficult situation including those living away from family and other support. They can of course use any suitable services provided for residents of the Lancaster district whilst they wait to be rehoused in their own area."
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