Figures from the government show there are record numbers of children in the UK who are affected by homelessness.
Newsround has looked at government data in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - and the number of children in temporary accommodation is rising in three out of four UK nations.
Housing charity Shelter has found that in England, a record 145,800 children were recorded as being homeless in 2024 - that is the highest it's ever been.
This has gone up by a record amount - a 15% increase since 2023.
The latest set of figures for Scotland show there were 16,263 children in households that were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness.
This is 10% higher than the previous year and is the equivalent to 45 children in Scotland becoming homeless every day.
Poverty is killing the UK
When people picture homelessness, they tend to imagine people sleeping rough on the street, tipped into insecurity by substance use problems. Viewed this way, one might imagine the US would rank highest in any international comparison.
Wrong. The main form of homelessness is people living in temporary accommodation, the main driver is an inability to afford housing, and America is not even particularly close to the worst. The UK holds that ignominious title, with an astonishing one in 200 households living in emergency lodging outside the formal housing sector
There is a certain out of sight, out of mind quality to temporary accommodation, but it accounts for more than 80 per cent of homelessness across the OECD. Hundreds of thousands of people across the developed world live this peripheral and fragile existence, and Britain’s record is dire.
After declining for several years, the number of English households living in temporary accommodation more than doubled between 2010 and 2023 from 48,000 to 112,000, the highest figure since records began. I’m quoting figures for England because it has the most complete data out of the four UK nations, but the others are if anything worse.
Conditions in these buildings are often atrocious. Damp and mould are commonplace, as are insect and animal infestations. The disruption of being moved from place to place causes adults to drop out of work and children out of school. In the past five years alone, the parlous state of temporary accommodation has been cited as a contributing factor in the deaths of 55 children in England.
These arrangements also impose enormous costs on local councils, which last year spent almost £1.8bn on emergency shelter, a figure that has more than doubled in real terms over the past decade.
This nightmare scenario is due to three main factors: woefully inadequate rates of housebuilding, a dwindling social housing sector and the erosion of financial support for those unable to afford market rents.
Relative to population size, the UK builds fewer homes than the vast majority of other developed countries. This has sent private sector rents spiralling, exacerbated by a 25 per cent shrinking of the social housing sector since the 1970s, slowly closing a crucial safety valve. sources:
Figures from the government show there are record numbers of children in the UK who are affected by homelessness.
Newsround has looked at government data in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - and the number of children in temporary accommodation is rising in three out of four UK nations.
Housing charity Shelter has found that in England, a record 145,800 children were recorded as being homeless in 2024 - that is the highest it's ever been.
This has gone up by a record amount - a 15% increase since 2023.
The latest set of figures for Scotland show there were 16,263 children in households that were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness.
This is 10% higher than the previous year and is the equivalent to 45 children in Scotland becoming homeless every day.
Record numbers of children have no permanent place to call home
The statistics in Northern Ireland show that in July 2023, just under 4,600 children were living in temporary accommodation.
Around 3,000 of these children were aged nine and under, which has gone up by 88% since 2019.
Data in Wales is collected month by month. The latest figures released in January 2024, show 411 children under the age of 16 were put into temporary accommodation.
穿著藍色高能見度背心的人坐在桌子上，桌上放著食物。誌願者向無家可歸的人分發食物。 Shutterstock
生死中無形的事物
在全球範圍內，無家可歸者的死亡率是普通人群的三到四倍。無家可歸和健康專家 James J. O’Connell 表示，盡管世界各地不同機構衡量無家可歸相關死亡率的方法各不相同，但國際死亡率卻“驚人地一致”——“跨越國界、文化和海洋”。
Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminology, The Open University
Disclosure statement
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.
The UK government is consulting on plans to stop publishing vital statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on deaths of homeless people. This is part of a wider review of mortality statistics including deaths in care homes and winter mortality.
Since 2018, the ONS in England and Wales and the National Records for Scotland (NRS) have published annual reports about the deaths of homeless people. This data offers insights into year-on-year changes in recorded deaths, including details about sex, age and cause of death. (There are plans to collate similar official data in Northern Ireland, but none has yet been published.)
The UK government claims that these statistics are “experimental” and that “further development work” is needed to bring them up to “national statistics status”. As part of its consultation, which closes on March 5 2024, the government is looking for feedback on “the relative importance” of these statistics.
Our research shows that death is a constant threat for people experiencing homelessness. However, this is rarely considered, by the public or by politicians, as part of the plight of being unhoused.
Read news coverage based on evidence, not alarm.
Volunteers distribute food to homeless people.Shutterstock
Invisible in life and death
Globally, homeless populations are three-to-four times more likely to die than the general population. Homelessness and health expert James J. O’Connell has said that despite the diverse methodologies different institutions across the world use to measure homelessness-related mortality, there is a “remarkable consistency” in death rates internationally – one that “transcends borders, cultures and oceans”.
Research shows that homeless adults and children are more likely to suffer underlying health conditions than the general population. Unhoused people are disproportionately likely to die due to violent accidents, such as being run over by a motor vehicle, or being crushed in a bin lorry.
Until 2018, the UK government did not track the number of people dying while homeless. Only when the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and journalist Maeve McClenaghan, working with London-based group The Museum of Homelessness, revealed the profound invisibility of this precise issue as part of their Dying Homeless project, did the ONS in England and Wales and the NRS begin to tackle it.
To date, their data is the most accurate official data on homelessness-related deaths in the UK. It is, however, imperfect – the ONS recognises as much, and advises caution in how it is interpreted.
These data limitations include the unreliability of coroners’ reports, which do not always record the fact that the deceased was homeless. This might be due to incomplete information given to the registrar, or out of consideration for the person’s family.
There is also no specific question on a death certificate to ask if a person was homeless at the time of death. Instead, the ONS must search death certificate data for registered addresses specified as “no fixed abode” or that are of a known hostel. And the ONS does not yet have a comprehensive list of all homeless hostels and emergency shelters, although such a list is now in development.
Unhoused people suffer from invisibility in both life and death.Shutterstock
Why this matters
The absence of data concerning homeless populations is not a new phenomenon. It underlines the wider invisibility from which unhoused people suffer.
The way people sleeping rough are counted involves less-than-perfect methods. In 2022, 80% of local authorities in England gauged numbers of rough sleepers using an “evidence-based estimate meeting”. This involves local agencies (such as charities, outreach teams and homelessness accommodation services) giving an informed estimate of how many people might be sleeping rough on a typical night. Only 20% of local authorities actually counted the people they saw sleeping rough.
And of course, homelessness covers more than rough sleeping. Statutory homelessness refers to people to whom local authorities owe either a main duty to house or a relief duty, whereby they work with applicants to attempt to prevent or relieve homelessness (for example, by developing a personalised plan to support an applicant).
Research shows the tools used to measure and assess homelessness and rough sleeping vastly underestimate how extensive it is. People who are not eligible for statutory support are not counted.
Further, not all homeless people will present themselves to local authorities, as some people – often referred to as the “hidden homeless” – are put off from applying because of fears of being rejected. As data on statutory homelessness is compiled based on these applications, many homeless adults and children are excluded from official statistics.
Health researchers argue that homelessness presents a public health crisis. Gauging the extent of it – by publishing official statistics on the number of people who die while homeless – is the first step in combating it.
At a time when evictions are rising and the affordable housebuilding system is set to all but collapse, deaths of homeless people is a critical political issue. The UK government needs to take responsibility for it.
If you found the article you just read to be insightful, you’ll be interested in our free daily newsletter. It’s filled with the insights of academic experts, written so that everyone can understand what’s going on in the world. Each newsletter has articles that will inform and intrigue you.
Daniel McCulloch
Victoria Cooper
Volunteers distribute food to homeless people. Shutterstock
Unhoused people suffer from invisibility in both life and death. Shutterstock
Scott White； CEO | Editor-in-Chief
