Facts and figures

Exact numbers of homeless people are very difficult to ascertain because of the transient nature of the homeless population. People who sleep on friends’ floors, stay in squats and other insecure accommodation are often not known. Even rough sleepers are difficult to count as people bed down at different times, move about, hide away or travel on all-night buses.

Rough sleeping

Knowing precisely how many people sleep rough at any time is complex: people move about, hide away or travel all night on buses. Others who claim they are sleeping rough may actually have somewhere to stay.

In the 1990s, the voluntary sector and the Government agreed a way to measure rough sleeping consistently, to show trends and patterns. This helped to allocate resources fairly and measure their impact. The 'street count' methodology, however, only counts people actually seen ‘bedded down’ by local teams during a short period at night. Street counts are also not conducted in every local authority area. The methodology therefore reveals the absolute minimum level of rough sleeping rather than the full extent.

The following information and statistics are currently available:

  • Rough Sleeping Profile: Homeless Link has published a short briefing with key statistics on rough sleeping.
  • Communities and Local Government publishes rough sleeping estimates in England online. The 2009 figures are now availiable.
  • In addition, Broadway publishes quarterly and annual reports on rough sleeping in London, based on data from the CHAIN database. General information on CHAIN is availiable, as are the latest annual and quarterly reports
  • The Simon Community often disputes the official figures and carries out its own street counts. You can read more about their figures at the Simon Community website
  • An alternative source of national data are the Supporting People client records. This dataset covers people accessing Supporting People services and would not cover those engaging with services and / or still on the street, since it is a record of an individual's needs and situation when they start receiving housing related support. However, it can give an idea of number of people that come to services as rough sleepers. In the client records people accessing services are put in a primary client group and then up to three secondary client groups.

Statutory Homelessness

Statutory homelessness figures relate to the definition of homelessness in the 1996 Housing Act. Statistics are collected on people who apply for homelessness assistance to local authorities and people who are deemed to be homeless under the legal definition. 

Statutory homelessness statistics for England can be found on the Communities and Local Government (CLG) website. Statistics are published quarterly and are broken down by region and local authority.

Supported Accommodation / hostels

For many homeless individuals without dependents the main housing option is hostel accommodation, the majority of which receives Supporting People (SP) funding. People living in hostels may or may not have been accepted as statutory homeless.

The following statistics are currently available:

Hidden homeless

There are other people who are homeless who do not show up in official figures. These include individuals and families who become homeless but find a temporary solution by staying with family members or friends. These are often referred to as 'sofa surfers' or concealed households. Others live in squats. There have been attempts to quantify the level of 'hidden homelessness'.

The New Policy Institute, in their research for Crisis in 2003, estimated that there are between 310,00 and 380,000 hidden homeless people. This figure includes people in hostels, who are not "hidden". More information about hidden homelessness is available at the Crisis website. 

Housing statistics

The following housing statistics are currently available: