Gee, I wonder how this will end? I mean, who could have anticipated that leaving so many people unemployed and without support services would result in a housing crisis? I'm trying to think if there were any other recent examples of anything like that. Let me think, I know it'll come to me...

Nearly seven million Britons are risking a "spiral of debt" through using credit cards, overdrafts and payday loans to pay off their rent or mortgage, a major housing charity has warned.

Of those almost one million have taken out high interest payday loans to meet housing costs, in what Shelter has deemed a “totally unsustainable” situation.

Roger Harding, head of policy and research at Shelter said that as households continue to feel the squeeze, there’s "no reason to expect that it won’t get worse”.

Shelter, in its report published Wednesday, also warned it wasn't just low income families at risk: "We're in a situation now when anyone can lose their home because it only takes unemployment or an unexpected illness to start tipping you into that spiral,” Harding told the Huffington Post UK.

"The council of mortgage lenders are predicting a 20% increase in the number of repossessions this year, and that's with interest rates at a 200-year-low. Private rents are going up.

“We are really starting to see increasing numbers of people who are just squeezed into this situation, whose situation hasn't changed but all the costs around them have.”

Harding predicted government cuts to housing benefits, which came in this month, will lead to more people “turning to credit to pay their rent”.