The number of women sleeping rough is estimated to be more than ten times greater than the official figures. What’s more, the measures women take to keep themselves safe are what’s depriving them of the help they need, hears DDN.

According to official government figures, women make up just 15 per cent of people sleeping rough. However, the ongoing Women’s Rough Sleeping Census launched by the Single Homeless Project (SHP) estimates that there may be more than ten times as many than are identified in the government’s annual ‘snapshot’ counts.

The report on the third annual census, How do we sleep at night?, was published this summer with a fourth currently being carried out. The census is based on surveys conducted with women who’ve identified themselves to outreach teams or other services as having slept rough in the last three months, as well as ‘Local Insights’ meetings where cross-sector services share information.

HIDDEN HOMELESSNESS
Conducted across almost 90 local authority areas, the 2024 census found that nearly three quarters of the women surveyed said they’d slept on the street at some point, with a quarter saying they’d stayed with a stranger or new acquaintance – clearly placing them at risk. More than a third reported having been in homelessness accommodation prior to sleeping rough, the report says, demonstrating that this ‘continues to be unsuitable’ for women’s needs. ‘Women are not a minority group within England’s homelessness population,’ it states. ‘They make up 60 per cent of all homeless adults in temporary accommodation, and hidden homelessness – widely acknowledged to be the form of homelessness predominantly experienced by women – has never been explored or quantified by the government.’

Women sleeping rough will try to stay out of sight for obvious reasons, but this comes at a cost. ‘It keeps them invisible to the very services that should be there to help’, the report says, with many local authorities also requiring people to be ‘verified’ as sleeping rough in order to access support. Women will frequently move between rough sleeping and ‘sofa surfing’, while other survival tactics can include remaining with abusive partners or providing drugs or stolen goods to secure a place to stay. While the average life expectancy for women in the general population is 83, for women who sleep rough it’s a shocking 43.

‘Rough sleeping is very scary as a woman alone,’ one respondent told the researchers. ‘If finding a group to sleep rough as a woman, you have to offer something for safety – money, drugs or sex’, while women who may be withdrawing from drugs are even more vulnerable, the report adds. More than 40 per cent of the women surveyed in the census had accessed drug and alcohol services.

NATIONAL ISSUE
The census project began when SHP partnered with the University of York to research women’s hidden homelessness in one London borough. This ‘showed overwhelmingly that women’s homelessness was being under counted’, SHP’s assistant director of system change (women’s homelessness and multiple disadvantage), Lucy Campbell, tells DDN. SHP then joined with a range of organisations including Solace Women’s Aid for a pilot cross-London census in 2022, with the scope broadening to include local authorities outside London from the following year.

The results proved that underestimates of women’s rough sleeping were a national issue, Campbell states. ‘Areas from all over the country have used the methodology to uncover some startling disparities between traditional snapshot count methods and the true scale of women’s rough sleeping,’ she says. ‘Researchers at Change Grow Live and Crisis then came on board in 2023, analysing the data and writing the national reports.’

The fact that the census is carried out by so many different bodies across the country – ‘homelessness organisations and local authorities of course, but also the substance use sector, the health sector, the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector, the migrant support sector’ – means that the data is much more accurate than the government’s, she stresses. ‘The census gets the right people to look for women in the right places. It’s a model that could, and should, be adopted nationally.’

So were they surprised by the findings – the sheer extent to which the official figures had been underestimated? ‘Sadly, it was what we expected, but the scale is still shocking,’ she says. ‘The government snapshot counted just 680 women across the whole of England – more than 300 local authorities – but by using a different approach that understands how women experience rough sleeping, the census identified over 1,700 women through Local Insights meetings and more than 1,000 through direct surveys.’ And that’s just from the 88 local authorities that participated, she points out.

‘This isn’t a new problem,’ she states. ‘For years, women have told us their homelessness was invisible. Now we have the evidence. It’s not just a gap in the numbers, it’s a systemic failure. When women aren’t counted, they aren’t seen. And if they’re not seen, they can’t be supported and services aren’t designed for them.’

So why are official data collection methods so blinkered – why do they overlook so many places where women might be spending the night? ‘The system was built around men’s experiences,’ she says. ‘The government definition of rough sleeping and subsequent counts focus on visible, mostly street-based locations, and the need for outreach workers to actually see someone “bedded down” or about to bed down. But women are far less likely to bed down in those places, because they face astronomically higher risks of rape, harassment and assault. Instead, they choose hidden and transient methods of rough sleeping to try to keep safe – they ride buses, sit in A&E, sleep in libraries, or just walk the streets all night, too scared to sleep at all. The 2024 census found 54 per cent of women sleep rough in public spaces that aren’t even recognised in official counts.’

DEVASTATING EFFECTS
The knock-on effects are devastating, she says. ‘If women aren’t sleeping rough according to the government definition, they often aren’t on outreach teams’ radar. And requiring them to be “verified” on the street before accessing services forces them into dangerous situations just to qualify for help. In effect, the system is excluding women because of the ways they keep themselves safe.’

The testimonies of the women participating in the census show that domestic abuse continues to be the leading cause of women’s homelessness, with the associated social isolation and distrust meaning they’re even less likely to try to access support. Rough sleeping, of course, then places them at great risk of ‘further exploitation, abuse and victimisation’.

So with sexual and gender-based violence both a cause and consequence of women’s rough sleeping, how has something so serious been overlooked for so long? ‘Because homelessness strategies and policies have been written as if homelessness is the same for everyone, when in reality domestic abuse and gender-based violence are near universal experiences for women who experience homelessness,’ says Campbell. ‘Women’s homelessness is driven by domestic abuse – in fact, it’s the leading cause.’ Women who answered last year’s census survey then described ‘being raped in doorways, forced into unsafe “survival sex,” or staying with strangers because they had no safer option’, she states.

Successive governments have failed to join the dots, she continues, with the last rough sleeping strategy running to nearly 100 pages yet devoting just two paragraphs to women. ‘That’s not oversight, that’s systemic neglect. The new homelessness strategy must respond to women’s experiences specifically, and we also need the government’s imminent VAWG strategy to address the linked experiences of homelessness and violence and abuse that women face, and set out a commitment to ensuring women can access safe and secure housing when they need it.’

So are services still being shaped entirely around men’s experiences, or is there any sense that things are starting to change? ‘There are glimmers of progress,’ she says. ‘Since 2022, over 2,000 women across England have shared their experiences through the census, and more councils are beginning to see that women’s homelessness looks different. Local authorities that have taken part in the census have used their data to change local practices and policies, and commission and fund new women’s services. But the change is uneven and not yet embedded nationally.’

ACTIONABLE COMMITMENT
With thousands of women still ‘unseen, unheard and unprotected’ what’s needed is a fundamental system redesign, she states. ‘That’s why our report calls for a dedicated chapter on women’s homelessness in the government’s forthcoming cross-departmental strategy, with clear, actionable commitments to responding to women’s homelessness specifically.’

While there is finally some ‘growing recognition’ that this is something that can’t be ignored – with the census’ recommendations highlighted in a recent APPG for Ending Homelessness report – good intentions aren’t enough, she states. As many people pointed out at the time, the ‘Everyone In’ scheme to house people sleeping rough during COVID proved what can be achieved when the political will is there.

‘Now, we need that urgency for women,’ she says. ‘A national strategy that recognises women’s homelessness in its own right isn’t optional, it’s essential. If government steps up, we can stop women falling through the cracks and finally deliver the safe housing and support they deserve.’

www.shp.org.uk
www.solacewomensaid.org/womens-rough-sleeping-census