The homeless are out of sight; they must not be out of mind

Government initiatives to tackle street homelessness have been successful, as have efforts to cut the numbers of families who are living in bed and breakfast accommodation.

But single homeless people in particular are still not getting the support they need and find themselves at the bottom of every list.

At the end of last year, the government told us that the number of households – of either single people or families – living in temporary accommodation has passed the 100,000 mark. But, sadly, these figures only tell part of the story. Working with the New Policy Institute, Crisis has estimated that there are actually up to 380,000 more households living in squats, hostels, B&Bs and other temporary accommodation who have never registered as homeless. Take the official figure and that estimate together, and you have half a million homeless households in the UK.

To be included in the government’s 100,000 figure, a household needs to have approached a local authority, been accepted as unintentionally homeless and then been considered to be in priority need. It’s a complex system for many of our clients to negotiate and they often slip through the net.

A lack of awareness and a mistrust of bureaucracy means many single homeless people don’t even approach their local authorities. In a study commissioned by Crisis, 50% of homeless people interviewed were not registering as homeless despite being very vulnerable people. These are the people known as the hidden homeless.

It is widely accepted that there are significant numbers of these people. In their submissions to the select committee on homelessness last month, charities including Shelter, Centrepoint, Crisis and Homeless Link all acknowledged that the government’s homelessness figures do not represent the full scale of the problem in this country.

Using indicators for deprivation we’ve created targets on poverty, health, unemployment. So why can’t we do the same thing for homelessness?

But there is still disagreement on two issues: precisely how many hidden homeless people there are; and whether we should be doing anything to help them.

So what is needed to defeat this problem? Resources and determination yes, but above all vision. We must have a new vision in 2005. I am amazed at our collective acceptance of the problem of hidden homelessness. We can imagine a world without third-world debt, we can imagine a world without child poverty. Why can we not imagine a world without homelessness?

We are already paying for homelessness, in wasted lives, broken homes, unemployment and the funding that goes into specialist services and support for homeless people. Solving the problem is, in the long run, likely to be a far cheaper proposition than ignoring it. The question should not be whether we do anything to solve the problem of hidden homelessness, but what we do.

To solve the problem of hidden homelessness for good, we must establish and agree on the scale. Over the decades, we’ve developed numerous indicators for deprivation, so that we could set targets for poverty, employment and health. Why can’t we do the same thing for homelessness?

Based on existing survey data and the 380,000 estimate, we have begun work on a project designed to deliver what we have tentatively called a hidden homeless census, out of which we hope will emerge the tools and methods by which we might begin to develop a definitive figure. But while Crisis can develop thinking in this field, measuring and tackling hidden homelessness will require far more than the efforts of our charity alone. Ultimately the government must make a realistic estimate of the numbers of homeless people – and act to help them all.