Our comment piece for Inside Housing discusses how our Unhealthy State of Homelessness report can help ensure the government’s strategy breaks the cycle of worsening ill health and homelessness.
The government’s National Plan to End Homelessness introduces several promising ambitions to jointly address health and homelessness. However, Homeless Link believes it risks not going far enough, not having fully understood that preventing homelessness is preventing severe physical and mental ill health.
Our Unhealthy State of Homelessness Report 2025 reveals in detail the nature and severity of the health and healthcare inequalities faced by people experiencing homelessness. Learning from this can be used to inform the detail of the Strategy, ensuring that early intervention opportunities are not missed.
On this basis our Policy Manager Cat Tottie has written and opinion piece for Inside Housing to highlight the areas of the strategy that may need further consideration in order to successfully break the cycle of worsening ill health and homelessness.
We are calling for stronger investment in universal prevention measures to alleviate poverty, a bolder level of buy-in and responsibility from the health system and a national Housing First programme to support people experiencing multiple disadvantage.
While the importance of supported housing is recognised in the plan, we are keen to see even greater commitment to ensuring an adequate supply of effective support and accommodation for everyone who needs it whenever it is needed, from homelessness prevention to recovery and independence.
We also put forward suggestions for strengthening several of the planned new programmes of support, including those for multiple disadvantage and dual diagnosis.
