The problem appears to be with us for the foreseeable future...

I don't quite know how I have managed to go through the last nearly forty years without seeing "Cathy Come Home" until tonight.

Especially with my interest in housing provision.

Have things improved? We've certainly demolished most of the women's hostels shown in the film. But what about absolute numbers in inadequate housing? The film quoted, I think, a million households in 1966. Government figures currently show just under a hundred thousand household accepted and in temporary accommodation.

But take Oxford. They are shown as supporting 742 households in temporary accommodation. But four thousand and more are on the housing register. So let's say there are nearly 600,000 households in inadequate accommodation. Then there's the estimate from Crisis a year or so ago, of the "hidden homeless" - those not on registers, "sofa surfing". They estimated another nearly 400,000 individuals.

As the last lines of the film said - "homelessness was seen as a temporary problem after the war, but the problem appears to be with us for the foreseeable future". Forty years on, it appears still to be a timely prophesy.