The national stats body the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has vowed to move beyond counting homelessness to understand more about the reasons why people end up on the streets.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Dying Homeless project came before the ONS’ own homelessness figures last year, preceding an official count of the number of homeless people dying in England and Wales.
It’s been hard to move the needle, and despite the many good efforts, homelessness seems stubbornly high
And the official rough sleeping figures that MHCLG releases annually are also treated with suspicion by homelessness charities. There are frequent suggestions that the 4,677 people that MHCLG reported last year is a vast underestimation while there is ongoing debate about the snapshot method used for the count.
In fact, homelessness data remains a tricky subject with little indication of how to prevent and tackle the issue coming from annual counts.
Now, ONS has teamed up with the Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) to launch a consultation to identify new national measures which look for the causes of homelessness.
The results will be used to create figures for the number of people at risk of homelessness as well as asking people with direct or indirect experience of the homelessness sector to identify factors which are known to contribute to the issue.
