Response ability

In March, Croydon Council, London, launched a rapid response service to help rough sleepers move away from the streets and into safer, more stable accommodation. The rapid response focuses on finding and engaging rough sleepers as swiftly as possible. It offers trauma‑informed, compassionate support that includes access to healthcare, mental health services, substance use treatment and help with accessing accommodation. The service is a partnership project between Thames Reach, the council, police, health services and voluntary, community and faith sector groups. In a press release, Jason Perry, Executive Mayor of Croydon, said: “This new rapid response service demonstrates our unwavering commitment to supporting Croydon’s most vulnerable residents with dignity and compassion.”

© The People's Recovery Project
Alight here: On 4 June, the People’s Recovery Project (TPRP) has organised an afternoon of spoken word, musical performances, DJ sets, motivational talks and much more from TPRP community members. TPRP supports people experiencing homelessness and addiction to build and sustain recovery. The free event, titled Lightbulb Moments, is open to the public and runs from 2 – 5pm at Dalston Curve Garden, 13 Dalston Lane, London, E8 3DF.
If you would like to know more about the services the People’s Recovery Project provides, visit the website: thepeoplesrecoveryproject.org

Child deaths

In the past six years, 104 children in England have died because of living conditions linked to temporary accommodation, data compiled by the all-party parliamentary group for households in temporary accommodation has found. The research also found that there were 64 stillbirths and 27 neonatal deaths involving mothers living in temporary accommodation in the UK in 2024. Responding to the findings, Siobhain McDonagh, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for households in temporary accommodation, announced: “We need urgent, sustained action to bring down the number of homeless children and to ensure that no family is left in conditions that put lives at risk. Because until that happens, we cannot honestly say we are doing enough.” An estimated 135,000 households live in temporary accommodation in England, including 176,000 children.

Closure

Back in March, LBC reported London’s only existing hospital unit providing addiction treatment for rough sleepers in need of support would be closing. The Addiction Clinical Care Suite at St Thomas’ Hospital has treated more than 1,000 patients since it opened in 2021. In May, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care suggested a replacement service will be set up in due course, telling LBC: “Rising costs meant the London boroughs determined the Addiction Clinical Care Suite was no longer affordable – with a £1m shortfall and times when beds were underused. They are inviting tenders for a more sustainable service and ministers have requested further advice on future provision.”

A picture from the exhibition SEEN. © Jack Eames
Picture perfect: A photography exhibition centering on Haircuts4Homeless (H4H) was held in London in April. Photographer and director Jack Eames spent seven years focusing his lens on the work of H4H, a charity offering people experiencing homelessness in the UK free haircuts. There are roughly 56 H4H projects in the UK, which since its foundation in 2014 has provided more than 12,000 free haircuts. Marking the opening of SEEN, Stewart Roberts MBE, founder of H4H, called the exhibition “a celebration of dignity, humanity and the belief that everyone deserves to be seen.”
Learn more about Haircuts4Homeless on its website: www.haircuts4homeless.com

Pub lunch

A WhatsApp group’s members are buying meals and drinks for homeless people through the Wetherspoon’s app. The group was started by Chris Illman, who was inspired by the Facebook group ‘Wetherspoons: the Game!’, a group that encourages strangers on Facebook to order rounds of drinks for each other at any Wetherspoon’s pub. That group is some 800,000 members strong. Illman’s WhatsApp group currently stands at around 700 members, operating on the premise that instead of buying drinks for one another, they would buy food and non-alcoholic drinks for those who could not afford it themselves. According to the Guardian, to request a meal people can contact admins on the ‘Wetherspoon’s: The Game!’ Facebook page with their location and meal request, accompanied by a photo to prove they are real and in the pub. An admin will then send the anonymised request to the WhatsApp group of potential donors. Since 2018, the group has bought tens of thousands of meals and hundreds of thousands of snacks for vulnerable people across the UK. 

Village people

Social Bite has opened a homelessness village in partnership with South Lanarkshire Council. Harriet Gardens is a £3m supported living community in Rutherglen, featuring 15 high-quality modular Nest Houses, an outdoor gym and a central community hub with shared spaces for cooking, group activities, therapeutic support and social connection. Third Force News quoted co-founder of Social Bite, Josh Littlejohn MBE, welcoming the news: “Harriet Gardens represents what is possible when we bring together housing, support and community in the right way. This is not just about providing a roof over someone’s head – it’s about creating a place where people feel valued, supported and able to rebuild their lives.” The village will be managed by charity partner The Salvation Army, providing specialist, round-the-clock support to residents.

© the Pavement
Opening night: Members of the Pavement team were present for opening night of a new exhibition by the Museum of Homelessness. Criminal charts the causes and criminalisation of homelessness from the 1600s to today. The exhibition includes new works by artists including 10Foot, Gemma Lees, Matt Bonner, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives and Surfing Sofas. A remarkable – and at times shocking – history of homelessness, Criminal is open from 21 May to 25 July and is free to attend. You can visit and see for yourself on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 12:30 – 4:30pm, at the museum’s Manor House Lodge address by Manor House Station, Seven Sisters Road, London, N4 2DE. The museum is closed 3, 4, 10 and 11 July. 
For more information see the Museum of Homelessness website: museumofhomelessness.org

Open all year

An Edinburgh winter homeless shelter will operate year-round, following a funding boost from Edinburgh Council. The Welcome Centre, run by Bethany Christian Trust, is usually open for the winter months and was due to close at the end of April 2026, but will now operate through to March 2027. The centre accommodates 64 households who have been sleeping rough in Edinburgh, providing meals and support to guests. Councillor Tim Pogson, housing, homelessness and fair work convener, told Edinburgh Evening News: “We don’t want people to have to sleep rough at any time of the year, so I’m really pleased that we’ll be able to keep the Welcome Centre open throughout 2026.”

Health warning

A major new briefing from Public Health Scotland has warned that homelessness in the country is increasingly driven by poverty, poor health and systemic pressures across public services. The Health and Homelessness Briefing, published in May, identifies homelessness is both a cause and consequence of severe health inequalities, with people experiencing homelessness facing significantly higher risks of physical and mental ill‑health, premature mortality and repeated contact with crisis services. Scottish Housing News reported Public Health Scotland has called for coordinated, rights‑based action to prevent people experiencing homelessness.

© Glasgow City Mission
Bicentenary birthday: Glasgow City Mission marked the 200th anniversary of its establishment in May, inviting people working with the homeless community from across the globe to learn about its projects and take part in a number of activities in the city. Four days of celebrations were brought to a close with a church service at Glasgow Cathedral on Sunday 17 May. The Mission was founded in 1826 and today involves volunteers and staff from more than 100 churches in and around Glasgow.

• Glasgow City Mission provides a range of services for people experiencing homelessness, including a drop-in centre, winter accommodation, food, outreach and much more. Visit the website to find out more: 
  www.glasgowcitymission.com 

Greece is finally emerging from the turmoil of the 2008 economic crisis. However, GDP growth cannot mask increasing inflation. Numbers published by the Ministry of Development show food prices, over the last five years, have increased about 39% and housing costs have risen by 31%. As a result, the purchasing power of Greeks remains the second lowest in the European Union, according to Eurostat.

These facts, combined with a lack of social housing policy in the country, have made housing costs impossible for many people. Some of them lose their homes and find themselves on the street. Yet no one can say how many homeless people there are in the country, as there is not an organised state mechanism for documenting them.

The only organised effort by the Greek state to record homeless people took place in May 2018, through a pilot study. The study was conducted in seven urban districts and recorded a total of 1,645 homeless people – widely acknowledged to be an underestimate.

To learn more about homelessness in Greece, I contacted Klimaka, a non-profit organisation providing valuable support services to homeless people, such as soup kitchens, shelters, street outreach, psychosocial support. According to Eleftheria Koumalatsou, scientific coordinator of the Dipylon Day Center for Homeless People managed by Klimaka, service users are mainly Greek men over the age of 45, though there are also people from other countries.

Katerina (not their real name), who used to work at the homeless shelter run by the local city council in Thessaloniki, says the guests shared a common characteristic: they ended up homeless after an unfortunate “turning point”. Some were substance users, some had mental health issues, some lost family networks, or simply lost their jobs.

Maria (not their real name) became homeless due to some “very serious family problems” and has been living on the streets of Athens for about four years.

In winter, she sleeps at the airport or in indoor car parks; in summer, she stays in parks. She claims that many people who sleep outside end up in a vicious cycle of crime, including drug dealing and sex work. The city council of Athens operates a homeless shelter, but she prefers to sleep outside because the conditions there are not good. The most unbearable thing: the bedbugs.

There were also bedbugs at the Thessaloniki shelter, Katerina claims. Furthermore, she remembers that the facilities were old and often broke down: “Some days, only two showers worked for 30 people, and people would fight over who would bathe first.”

Refugees and migrants also face an increased risk of homelessness – alongside prejudice – in Greece. Katerina reports that some Greek residents at the shelter expressed racist views about their refugee or migrant roommates. She adds that many employees had no training in managing multicultural groups and held stereotypical views about these people too.

Shedia is the only street paper in Greece. Spyros Zonakis, a journalist for the paper, has encountered several stories of hidden homelessness, many of them in the idyllic landscapes of the Greek islands.

One remarkable case he recorded was in Santorini, where teachers ended up in tents or on sunbeds because landlords evicted them to rent the houses to tourists. In Mykonos, some newly appointed teachers were put up by colleagues, as it was impossible to find a decent home on a salary of just €770. On another Cycladic island, workers at a luxury hotel were forced to live in the pool’s machinery room.

“We come across cases of hidden homelessness more and more often in urban areas, mainly among women,” adds Koumalatsou.

All this uncertainty obviously has an impact on the psychology of homeless people.

Maria describes her mood as an emotional roller coaster. She might find a job for a short period and get back on her feet, but when her contract ends, she is back on the street. “Some friends of mine have simply accepted that they will live on the street forever,” she says. She also admits that she has become more solitary and finds it harder to forgive people. “After all, whatever bad happened to me, it was caused by people,” she comments.

Katerina observes that people staying at the Thessaloniki shelter often end up in a state of institutionalisation and don’t look for a job or a place to rent. “They are not provided with any specialised care or guidance to help them find work. The staff treat them in a purely procedural way,” she adds. “Most of the time our guests are not just deprived of these things. They are also deprived of something much more basic: hearing a kind word from someone.”

Rough figures

Government figures released in late February show England rough sleeping figures have reached a record high. The numbers, gathered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, reveal the number of people sleeping rough on a single night in England in November 2025 rose to a record high of 4,793, compared to 4,667 for the same period lin 2024. Bonnie Williams, Chief Executive of Housing Justice, commented: “The underlying pressures that drive homelessness have not disappeared and while rough sleeping is the most visible form of homelessness, it is only part of the picture. The record numbers of households in temporary accommodation show just how many families are living in limbo.” The figure tallied in November 2025 is 42 more people than England’s previous record high in 2017.

Footy fundraiser

The Street Soccer Foundation, a UK charity using football to help tackle youth homelessness, announced the start of the 2026 season of its flagship The Big Goal campaign in late February. The Big Goal is a national social impact campaign, directly funding places on the charity’s Street Soccer Academy through a fundraising football tournament, an initiative which enables young people experiencing homelessness, unemployment or disadvantage to access a 12-week programme combining football coaching with personal development, mentoring and employability support. This year, 60 businesses and organisations have signed up to take part in the campaign. In the previous two editions, The Big Goal has raised more than £250,000 to support the expansion of the Street Soccer Academy programme across the UK. The football fixtures take place over April and May, before culminating in a final held at St George’s Park (home to England’s national men's, women's and para football teams) on 11 June.

© the Pavement
Festival news: One Roof, Old Diorama Arts Centre's (ODAC) jam-packed arts programme for artists with lived experience of homelessness, held its annual two‑week festival from 19th to 30th January, running Mondays to Fridays. This year’s festival, titled Bricks and Mortar, provided guests with a mix of arts workshops interwoven with mental health and wellbeing sessions, alongside an open studio. Artists worked on numerous projects, both individual and collective, before presenting works at the festival’s closing ceremony exhibition at ODAC, London on 27 February. Artworks including paintings and films were on show to visitors, alongside speeches by the artists and performances for One Roof’s regular scratch nights – nights dedicated to providing space for artists with lived experience of homelessness to present new works. 

Hypocrisy corner

A London philanthropist, claiming to be committed to solving homelessness in the capital, moved to evict hundreds of people from their homes recently. In late February, London Centric learned that Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital business planned to remove hundreds of Londoners – including some who were marking the holy month of Ramadan – from their homes. The mass “no-fault” evictions of private tenants, which sources say are scheduled to be handily finished before the government’s pesky Renters’ Rights Act comes into effect, are taking place on an unprecedented scale. The evictions are going ahead regardless of whether the residents are up-to-date with their rent or have kept the property in good condition. Aziz, who recently moved to low-tax Abu Dhabi, runs Criterion Capital alongside other members of his family and has courted controversy over recent years for the business’s landlord practices, which include trying to shut down historic London cinemas and renting properties to tax-evading American candy stores (currently blighting London’s West End). 

Temporary pain

The Local Government Association (LGA) has projected the cost to councils of providing temporary accommodation for homeless people in England will more than double by 2029–30 to almost £4bn. According to the Guardian, the LGA also found that the annual cost to councils of temporary accommodation was set to grow by 65% in the next five years, rising from nearly £360m to £595m. Since 2017–18, local authorities across England had spent almost £1.5bn more on temporary accommodation than had been reimbursed in housing benefit from the government. That figure is predicted to jump to £3.9bn in the next four years, the LGA said. Tom Hunt, the chair of the LGA’s inclusive growth committee and leader of Sheffield city council, spelled out the alarming financial gaps local authorities face: “Councils are caught in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing temporary accommodation costs versus static rates they receive back to cover their costs.”

SWEPt up

New findings by the Museum of Homelessness show homeless people continue to be excluded from life-saving provision during extreme weather. On 5 March 2026, the Museum of Homelessness released the second edition of its investigation Severe Weather Emergency 2022–2024, which scrutinises how councils and services are adapting to increasingly extreme weather. The investigation found, among other revelations, that a form of gatekeeping by local authorities was common practice, with 42% of councils using a verification system as a pre-condition to access Severe Weather Emergency Protocol support.

© the Pavement
Town hall: On a mid February evening in Camden, London Streets Kitchen held a meeting to discuss to the council’s appraoch to homelessness and what local organisations, charities and individuals can do to effect change. The meeting was held at St Michael’s Church in Camden and was organised by the Streets Kitchen team with support from SK Legal. A panel presented the situation on the ground at 'Camden: a homeless and housing crisis intensifying', inviting guests present at the meeting to suggest ideas and discuss ways to move forward. Politicians, charity workers and people experiencing homelessness were all in attendance. The night ended on a positive note, a reaffirming of the commitment of local groups to work together and hold the local authorities to account, as well as support people on the streets and experiencing all forms of homelessness.

Dying homeless

Data from the National Records of Scotland (NRS), released in early March, revealed an estimated 231 people died while experiencing homelessness in Scotland in 2024. The NRS figures were slightly lower than the previous year, during which 242 deaths were recorded, but were higher than when records began in 2017. Before the records were released, the Scottish government had found there were 2,092 households reporting a household member experiencing rough sleeping between 1 April to 30 September 2025 across the country.
According to the NRS report, around half (49%) of the people experiencing homelessness who died in 2024 were aged under 45. Responding to the data, Maeve McGoldrick, head of policy and communications at Crisis Scotland, said: “we [Crisis Scotland] are calling on all political parties to commit to ending homelessness by 2040 in their upcoming manifestos.”

Housing news

The housing association Home Group Scotland, working with the local authorities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, has secured a batch of new homes for homeless families in Scotland. Altogether, 16 families are set to move into new homes in the cities: six families in South Queensferry, while 10 families have moved into homes in Tillycairn, Glasgow. An additional eight homes in Farrier Fields, Edinburgh, were scheduled to be made available to families in March 2026. The welcomed Scottish Housing News report comes amidst a severe housing crisis in Scotland. In Edinburgh, for example, homelessness among children and families had risen 148% in the five years leading up to 2024, Shelter Scotland figures show. 

Complaints

The Glasgow Times reported in late February that the owner of the Scotsman Group has written to Glasgow City Council issuing a “strong formal objection” to Homeless Project Scotland's (HPS) retrospective planning application for the use of a building on Glassford Street as a homeless facility. HPS has applied for permission to run a 24-hour facility, with its application papers outlining plans to run a soup kitchen on the ground floor along with a night shelter in the basement. The formal complaint to the council had a redacted name at the end of the letter, however, it states it is from “the owner and operator of the Scotsman Group,” which runs several bars and restaurants in the Merchant City district. The letter’s listed reasons for objecting to the HPS application include: “harm to the economic function and commercial stability of the city centre”, “overconcentration of similar uses” and “adverse impact on business operations and staff safety”. 

Firefighter

A homeless man who attempted to extinguish a fire in a Glasgow shop says the massive explosion from the inferno “nearly killed him.” Footage from the dramtic scene shows James Welch, 51, charging towards a blazing vape shop on Union Street armed with a fire extinguisher, with thick smoke pouring from the building. Two members of the public rushed to drag him away from the danger and moments later a huge explosion burst from the building. The fire raged from the evening of Sunday, 9 March into the next morning, with firefighters battling to contain the devastation. Smoke was seen billowing across the city centre, as the fire destroyed premises on Gordon Street, including historic Victorian buildings. Welch told the Daily Record: “I wasn't scared for my life, I couldn't let people die. I tried to get into the shop by which point I was dragged away from behind… Those men in turn saved my life."

Recovery plan

A trauma-informed recovery hub for people experiencing homelessness is scheduled to open in Glasgow. The Lighthouse Project will be based at Kingston Halls and offer guests counselling, structured activities and employability support to help rebuild lives. The Talbot Association, the city's largest provider of homeless accommodation, is behind the project, which is hoped to be open this year after fundraising is complete. In the meantime, The Talbot Association is inviting community support to help make the project a reality and extend its impact. A key feature of the hub will be a partnership with Glasgow Clyde College, which will see trainee counsellors working alongside structured activities The scheme will also offer arts, mindfulness and digital inclusion. Currently The Talbot Association operates six supported accommodation sites in Glasgow, serving approximately 200,000 meals each year, according to The National.