Hidden Homelessness: The People Who Don't Appear in the Statistics

When we think about homelessness, most of us picture someone sleeping rough on the street. These experiences are real, urgent, and deserving of attention, but they are only part of the story.

Imagine a woman fleeing domestic abuse in a rural Norfolk village. She spends a week on a friend's sofa, then moves to a relative's spare room. When that arrangement breaks down, she sleeps in an empty garage, showers at the gym where she luckily still has a membership and spends days in cafés to avoid returning home. She never appears in a rough sleeping count. She may never contact a homelessness service. Nevertheless, she is homeless.

Across England, we know that at least 404,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness, including almost 176,000 children living in temporary accommodation. In the East of England alone, there are at least 26,000 people experiencing homelessness and nearly 12,000 children in TA. However, these stark figures still do not show the full picture.

Behind every number is a person navigating uncertainty, risk and difficult choices, often far from public view.

In the East of England, this hidden reality can be particularly difficult to see. Much of our region is rural or semi-rural, meaning homelessness is often less visible than in major cities. Someone sleeping in a farm building, living in a caravan, moving between villages to stay with family, or spending nights in a car can remain largely invisible to public services and official counts.

At Hopestead, we believe that if we want to address homelessness properly, we must start by recognising everyone affected by it, not just those we can see.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Official homelessness records are vital for understanding trends, monitoring demand and allocating resources. But, by their nature, they only capture people who come into contact with services or meet specific definitions. Many others remain invisible. People experiencing hidden homelessness often move between temporary arrangements, staying out of sight of official systems and support services. In rural areas, communities are spread out and public services can be harder to access, with fewer support options available nearby.

For some, homelessness becomes something they work hard to conceal. They may continue going to work every day while sofa surfing between friends. They may keep children in school while moving between temporary arrangements. They may never seek help because they fear stigma or believe others are more deserving of support.

Hidden homelessness does not always look like the public image of homelessness. Sometimes it looks like a spare bedroom where someone has overstayed their welcome, a family squeezed into a single room, or a young person moving from sofa to sofa while trying to stay in education or work.

Hidden homelessness is rarely a stable arrangement. Many people move constantly, never knowing where they will stay next. Four in ten people experiencing hidden homelessness reported moving more than six times in a typical month.

Hidden homelessness is often portrayed as a less severe form of homelessness because someone has a roof over their head. The reality can be very different. More than half of people surveyed reported experiencing violence or abuse while hidden homeless, and almost six in ten said they had feared for their safety.

Hidden homelessness affects children too. While nearly 12,000 children are known to be living in temporary accommodation across the East of England, many more will be living in unstable arrangements that never enter official records. Behind the statistics are children travelling long distances to stay at the same school, lacking space to play or study, and living with the uncertainty of not knowing where they might be living next month.

The result is that the true scale of homelessness remains unknown.

Who Gets Overlooked?

While rough sleeping remains the most visible form of homelessness, evidence suggests hidden homelessness affects many more people. Research by Crisis and Heriot-Watt University estimates that more than 208,000 households across Britain are experiencing hidden homelessness, a figure that has increased by almost a third since 2020.

The Women's Rough Sleeping Census found that up to ten times as many women may be sleeping rough as are identified through official government snapshot counts. Many women avoid visible rough sleeping and instead stay on buses, in A&E waiting rooms, transport hubs or other places of relative safety. In one census, nearly two-thirds of women had slept in locations that would not be included in official rough sleeping counts. Women's experiences are often hidden because they are more likely to stay temporarily with friends and family, remain in unsafe relationships, exchange accommodation for safety, or avoid sleeping rough altogether because of the heightened risks they face.

Likewise, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and people from ethnic minority communities are disproportionately represented among people experiencing homelessness. Many face multiple barriers simultaneously, including discrimination, poverty, poor health, and a lack of suitable housing options. Their experiences are not always reflected in the way homelessness is measured or portrayed.

If we only count what we can see, we risk overlooking those most vulnerable to harm. To understand why so many people are being pushed into hidden homelessness, we also need to look at the wider systemic barriers and pressures driving the crisis.

How Did We Get Here?

The growth in homelessness is not the result of individual failure; it reflects a wider housing system under immense pressure.

The cost of living continues to place enormous strain on households. Rising rents, food costs, fuel bills, and day-to-day expenses are stretching many families to their limits. For many people, wages and welfare support simply are not keeping pace with housing costs.

At the same time, decades of underinvestment in social and affordable housing have reduced the availability of genuinely affordable homes. A combination of underbuilding, the loss of social housing stock and growing demand has left many households with few options when they encounter financial difficulty.

These pressures are particularly acute in parts of the East of England. High housing costs, growing demand, limited social housing stock, high levels of second-home ownership in some coastal communities, and a shortage of affordable private rentals have combined to push more households into housing insecurity.

The result is clear: more households are being pushed into temporary accommodation, more people are experiencing hidden homelessness, and more families are living with uncertainty about where they will sleep next month.

The impact is also being felt by local authorities. Across England, councils spent around £2.8 billion on temporary accommodation in 2024/25. Based on local authority data, we estimate around £151 million was spent across the East of England alone. In some areas, costs have risen dramatically, with South Norfolk and Broadland seeing spending increase from around £45,000 before the pandemic to more than £1 million in 2025. These figures illustrate the growing cost of managing homelessness rather than preventing it.

A Different Conversation

If we focus only on visible homelessness, we risk missing opportunities to intervene earlier, prevent crisis and support people before their situation deteriorates further.

A different conversation means looking beyond rough sleeping counts and recognising homelessness wherever it happens: in spare rooms, cars, overcrowded homes, unsafe relationships, and temporary arrangements that can break down overnight.

Hidden homelessness will not be solved by emergency accommodation alone. It requires investment in genuinely affordable housing, stronger prevention services, earlier support for people at risk of homelessness, and housing solutions that work in all communities.

Most of all, it requires us to acknowledge the people who are currently missing from the conversation. They may not appear in the statistics. They may never feature in rough sleeping counts. But they are there, in every town, village and city across the East of England.

At Hopestead, we believe they deserve to be seen, heard and supported. Because homelessness should not have to be visible before it matters.