Coupled with poverty, homelessness in the UK is on in the increase. Research commissioned by the National Housing Federation in 2019 identifies that in England 3.6 million people are living in overcrowded houses, 2.5 million cannot afford where they live and 2.5 million are living with relatives and parents because they have no other choice. This puts significant stress on families and can lead to breakdown of the home.
Using the definition of homelessness below, some of these people are already considered homeless, and the rest are at risk of homelessness. The Children’s Commissioner’s research (2019) suggests that of the 600,000 children and young people referred to above, 210,000 are either living in temporary accommodation or ‘sofa surfing’ (i.e. staying with friends or family without any formal arrangement being in place and often sleeping in spaces not designed as bedrooms). These figures are however an estimate as there are many people, e.g. those classed by local authority housing providers as intentionally homeless, or those with no recourse to public funds, that do not show up in any statistics.