Women's Homelessness in Camden : Improving Data, Strategy and Outcomes

The Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York, working with Fulfilling Lives Islington and Camden, SHP and the London Borough of Camden and other partners across Camden agencies, was commissioned to explore ways in which the strategic response to women’s homelessness in Camden could be enhanced. The research was focused on lone women experiencing homelessness, as data are better developed on family homelessness. When this form of lone women’s homelessness becomes sustained or repeated, it is broadly associated with high and complex needs. Lone women’s homelessness does not represent women’s homelessness as a whole. For example, many statutorily homeless families in London and beyond are headed by women lone parents. Lone women’s homelessness is not confined to women who experience living rough. Rough sleepers only represent a small fraction of the population experiencing homelessness at any one point in the UK. Lone women can be living rough, but are more likely to be living in homelessness services, emergency and temporary accommodation and, particularly, to be experiencing ‘hidden’ or ‘concealed’ homelessness , i.e. staying in insecure/precarious arrangements with relatives, friends or acquaintances because they have nowhere else to go.