Northamptonshire charity say women's homelessness often hidden
Figures released today show there's 10 times more women sleeping rough than the Government counts, often sofa surfing or sleeping on buses.
Last updated 3rd Jul 2025
New findings from the third national Women’s Rough Sleeping Census, published today reveal that government figures dramatically underestimate the number of women sleeping rough.
The national census, by Solace and Single Homeless Project alongside Crisis and Change Grow Live, conducted across 88 local authorities, uses more thorough and accurate ways to count women sleeping rough - methods that better reflect the true scale and realities of how women experience rough sleeping across England, such as the near-universal experiences of domestic abuse and VAWG (violence against women and girls). It recorded over ten times more women than the Government’s snapshot data.
"We need to advocate for those who don't have a voice"
Ami Fletcher from Northampton Hope Centre says often the real number of homeless women is often hidden and invisible:
"There's significant safety concerns. Instead, they are more likely to use informal arrangements to survive. More sofa surfing, sleeping cars, staying with strangers, engaging in survival sex in exchange for shelter, these forms of accommodation, they aren't captured by the rough sleeping counts."
"This is why the the statistics for homelessness, I think for women is a lot less."
Ami says the reasons behind homelessness can look very different for women as opposed to men, from sexual exploitation, to domestic violence and trauma of childhood loss, and sometimes it can cause women to withdraw from services that would offer support.
She feels we need to move away from visible street counts to include other hidden forms of homelessness:
"I think that we need to work within the communities. We definitely need to speak to GP's and we need to speak to domestic abuse hostels, we need to speak to schools."
She wants to see a great collaboration and government support to tailor support to better help people:
"It's needs to be a person centred approach. Each one of the clients that come through our service, they're not a number. They are people with trauma and experiences and this is their lives.
"They're a person and we need to remember that."
What did the report find?
The report, How Do We Sleep at Night? published today recommends that the Government develops a specific chapter on women's homelessness.
Key report findings
• The Government is not looking in the right places: Many of the locations where women spend the night are not classified as ‘rough sleeping’ in the Government’s snapshot counts, such as A&E departments, libraries, or public transport. This means over half (54%) of women reported sleeping rough in the types of public spaces that would not have been included in official data collection and therefore unlikely to receive support from outreach teams.
• Accommodation services aren’t designed for women’s needs - One third of respondents (37%) reported that they had been in some form of homelessness accommodation before sleeping rough. This shows that current services often fail to meet women’s needs and aren’t enough to prevent them from sleeping rough.
• Services aren’t joined up - Homelessness services aren’t set up to reach women. 77% weren’t getting support from a housing officer or council housing team, 43% weren’t in touch with a homelessness service, and a third weren’t accessing either. Even when women do engage with other services - like drug and alcohol support - those services are often not equipped to help with homelessness.
Jasmine Basran, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Crisis, said:
“Women are falling through the cracks of our homelessness system. From the way we provide services to the way we determine how many people are actually sleeping on the streets, the current approach lacks nuance and doesn’t fully consider that many women experience homelessness differently to men.
"Women are being excluded from support and exposed to harm when services fail to recognise that they’re sleeping rough. We also hear from women how they don’t feel safe with some of the support on offer as it doesn’t account for specific experiences, such as fleeing domestic abuse.
"As the government prepares their strategy to end homelessness, it’s crucial they include a specific chapter on this issue to ensure women get the specialist support they need to leave homelessness behind.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said:
“We inherited devastating levels of homelessness and rough sleeping and know women can be particularly affected, including those who are victims of violence and abuse. That’s why we are taking urgent and decisive action to end homelessness, by providing £1 billion for crucial homelessness services this year so councils can support people faster.”