While homelessness might conjure up the image of someone bedding down in a shop doorway, the reality is that they are the minority. Thousands of people live in temporary accommodation supplied by local authorities. Others have called on the council for help to avoid becoming homeless.
But those are just the cases we know about. There’s also another group of people experiencing homelessness who have fallen through the cracks. Out of sight, out of mind. They may be bunking with friends, sleeping on families’ sofas, sleeping in cars parked out of sight. People who find themselves in this position may not even consider themselves homeless.
It’s a situation that young people are particularly vulnerable to and minority groups, such as people in the LGBTQ+ community, are also more likely to be affected.
Ben Keegan, chief executive of Sheffield youth homelessness charity Roundabout, told Big Issue: “The first thing that springs to mind when you think of hidden homelessness among people we see is people sleeping on a settee at a friend’s or an auntie’s.
“If you’ve lost your home, the first thing you do is go to friends and family and say: ‘Can I stay at your house?’ It’s what people do before they approach a service like ours.”
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By its very nature, hidden homelessness is unseen and there is no UK-wide definition of it, which makes it hard to measure. It often ends when someone decides to make themselves known to services that can help. That can come from reaching out to support themselves or when the person they are staying with finally calls time on the living arrangement.
Our focus comes at a time when governments across Britain are laying out their vision to tackle homelessness and the housing crisis. Both Scottish and Welsh governments are rolling out new legislation looking to prevent homelessness while the Westminster government is due to publish a cross-government strategy on the issue.
They must not lose sight of those who are falling through the cracks if they are to prevent a new generation seeing the realities of homelessness first-hand.
Nicholas Connolly, CEO of EveryYouth – a network of charities including Roundabout, said reaching young people will be key to that. That includes measures like Upstream, which uses surveys to identify kids at risk of homelessness in school in England and Wales before stepping in to prevent it.
“If this [Westminster] government is going to reduce youth homelessness it must address its root causes. Raising children is hard and the support available is limited,” said Connolly. “Only by scaling programmes like Upstream – pioneered by EveryYouth charities – which proactively identifies children and families that need help, can we reduce hidden homelessness substantially.”
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The hidden homelessness on our doorstep
Illustration: Simbie Yau
Homelessness is notoriously difficult to count – but for people not in view on the street or approaching services, they might as well be invisible. How many people are in that position? It’s tough to know.
Back in 2023, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) attempted to research how many people in the UK may be experiencing hidden homelessness. The statistics body concluded that “it is not currently possible to estimate the true scale of hidden homelessness across the UK because of known complexities in reaching this population group”.
Over the years, plenty of people have tried to quantify how many people might be homeless but out of sight. Homelessness charity Crisis said in 2011 that an estimated 62% of the people they surveyed in England were experiencing hidden homelessness at the time of the poll while 92% had been in that position in the past.
The London Assembly’s Housing Committee estimated that 13 times more people were experiencing hidden homelessness than visibly sleeping rough back in 2017.
The English Housing Survey keeps track of ‘concealed households’, meaning people who can’t afford to buy or rent elsewhere. Approximately 1.5 million households in England contained additional concealed households, representing 6% of the country’s total.
These concealed households tended to be younger, male and living with their parents with just over half (54%) aged 16 to 24. While not traditionally thought of as homeless, rising numbers of young people are living with parents for longer.
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Scotland’s homelessness statistics keep track of the accommodation where people were last staying before they made a homelessness application to a local authority. While not a cast-iron measure of hidden homelessness, the family home (26% of cases) and a friend’s places (20%) were the most common answers in 2023-24.
The ONS noted that evidence suggested women, young people and ethnic minorities are more likely to experience hidden homelessness. Overcrowding can also be considered a form of homelessness and ethnic minorities are more likely to experience it.
The 2021 Census in England and Wales showed households where all members were Muslim were five times more likely to experience overcrowding in England and six times more likely in Wales. Households where all members identified as black, black British, black Welsh, Caribbean or African had the highest level of overcrowding – 16.1% in England and 11.9% in Wales – compared with all households.
The hidden nature of homelessness for women even inspired Single Homeless Project and Solace Women’s Aid to set up the women’s rough sleeping census to keep track.
The groups argue that the dangers on the street mean women are more likely to hide away than bed down on the street. Their census takes in night buses, 24-hour fast food restaurants and other places where women might seek shelter instead.
They have found 10 times as many women could be sleeping rough in some form than is counted in England’s official rough sleeping snapshot.
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