Homelessness is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. The definition of homelessness differs from country to country, with some countries yet to have any definition in place. People can be categorized as homeless if they: are living on the streets (primary homelessness); have no permanent house or place to live safely are moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family, hotels, and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness)
The legal status of homeless people changes from place to place. Homeless enumeration studies conducted by the government of the United States also include people who sleep in a public or private place that is not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.Office of Applied Studies, United States Department of Health and Human Services, "Terminology" Homelessness and poverty are interrelated. There is no standardized method for counting homeless individuals and identifying their needs; consequently, most cities only have estimated figures for their homeless populations.
In 2025, approximately 330 million people worldwide experience absolute homelessness, lacking any form of shelter. Other words that have been used to indicate homelessness or homeless persons include vagrancy, hobos, and tramps.
United Nations definition In 2004, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs defined a homeless household as those households without a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters due to a lack of a steady income. The affected people carry their few possessions with them, sleeping in the streets, in doorways or on piers, or in another space, on a more or less random basis."United Nations Demographic Yearbook review: National reporting of household characteristics, living arrangements, and homeless households: Implications for international recommendations", United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division, Demographic, and Social Statistics Branch, 14 April 2004
In 2009, at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Conference of European Statisticians (CES), the Group of Experts on Population and Housing Censuses defined homelessness as:
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 10 December 1948 by the UN General Assembly, contains this text regarding housing and quality of living:
The ETHOS Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion was developed as a means of improving the understanding and measurement of homelessness in Europe, and to provide a common "language" for transnational exchanges on homelessness. The ETHOS conceptualizes homelessness as a process (rather than a static phenomenon) that affects many vulnerable households at different points in their lives. The typology was launched in 2005 and is used for different purposes: as a framework for debate, for data collection purposes, policy purposes, monitoring purposes, and in the media. This typology is an open exercise that makes abstraction of existing legal definitions in the EU member states. It exists in 25 language versions, the translations being provided mainly by volunteer translators.
Many countries and individuals do not consider housing as a human right. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter addressed this issue in a 2017 interview, saying, "A lot of people don't look at housing as a human right, but it is". His view contrasts with many Americans who do not believe housing is a basic human right.
Other terms Many homeless enumeration studies published in the 2010s and onward utilize the term unsheltered homeless. The common colloquial term street people does not fully encompass all unsheltered people, in that many such persons do not spend their time in urban street environments. Many shun such locales, because homeless people in urban environments may face the risk of being robbed or assaulted. Some people convert unoccupied or abandoned buildings ("squatting"), or inhabit mountainous areas or, more often, lowland meadows, creek banks, and beaches."Inside Straight Edge". Writer: David Shadrack Smith. Directors: Jim Gaffey and David Shadrack Smith. Inside. National Geographic Society. 9 April 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2011.
Many jurisdictions have developed programs to provide short-term emergency shelter during particularly cold spells, often in churches or other institutional properties. These are referred to as warming centers, and are credited by their advocates as lifesaving.
Other common terms include unhoused, urban campers, unsheltered, unhomed, and houseless.
In 2020, an entry on homelessness was added to The Associated Press Stylebook noting how "Homeless is generally acceptable as an adjective to describe people without a fixed residence" and that reporters should use person-first language to "avoid the dehumanizing collective noun the homeless, instead using constructions like homeless people, people without housing or people without homes."
History
Early history through the 19th century
United Kingdom
Following the Peasants' Revolt, English constables were authorized under 1383 English Poor Laws to collar vagabonds and force them to show support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol. Vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added. The presumption was that vagabonds were unlicensed beggars. In 1547, a bill was passed that subjected vagrants to more provisions of the criminal law, namely two years servitude and branding with a "V" as the penalty for the first offense and death for the second. Many vagabonds were among the convicts transported to the American colonies in the 18th century.Convict Voyages (1): Overview, by Anthony Vaver, Early American Crime, 6 January 2009
During the 16th century in England, the state first tried to give housing to vagrants instead of punishing them, by introducing bridewells to take vagrants and train them for a profession. In the 17th and 18th centuries, these were replaced by workhouses but these were intended to discourage too much reliance on state help.
United States
After 1870 hundreds or thousands of homeless men formed part of a counterculture known as "hobohemia" all over the United States. In smaller towns, hobos temporarily lived near train tracks and hopped onto trains to various destinations.Depastino, Todd, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003. . (Interview with Todd Depastino)
The first U.S. rescue mission, the New York City Rescue Mission, founded in 1872 by Jerry and Maria McAuley. After 1890 the growing Progressive Era movement toward social concern sparked the development of rescue missions.
Modern
20th century
The U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s caused an epidemic of poverty, hunger, and homelessness in the United States. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took over the presidency from Herbert Hoover in 1933, he signed the New Deal, which expanded social welfare, including providing funds to build public housing.Kennedy, David M. "What the New Deal Did." Political Science Quarterly, vol. 124, no. 2, [The Academy of Political Science, Wiley], 2009, pp. 251–268.
How the Other Half Lives and Jack London's The People of the Abyss (1903) discussed homelessness and raised public awareness, which caused some changes in building codes and social conditions. In England, dormitory housing called "spikes" was provided by local boroughs. By the 1930s in England, 30,000 people were living in these facilities. In 1933, George Orwell wrote about poverty in London and Paris, in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. In general, in most countries, many towns and cities had an area that contained the poor, transients, and afflicted, such as a "skid row". In New York City, for example, there was "the Bowery" – traditionally, where people with an alcohol use disorder were to be found sleeping on the streets, bottle in hand.
In the 1960s in the UK, the nature and growing problem of homelessness changed in England as public concern grew. The number of people living "rough" in the streets had increased dramatically. However, beginning with the Conservative administration's Rough Sleeper Initiative in 1990, the number of people sleeping rough in London fell dramatically. This initiative was supported further by the incoming Labour administration from 2009 onwards with the publication of the Coming in from the Cold strategy published by the Rough Sleepers Unit, which proposed and delivered a massive increase in the number of hostel bed spaces in the capital and an increase in funding for street outreach teams, who work with rough sleepers to enable them to access services.Wilson, Wendy. Rough Sleepers, Standard Note SN/SP/2007, House of Commons Library,
Scotland saw a different picture. The Right to Buy policy in the 1980s and 1990s reduced the amount of social housing available, which contributed to homelessness becoming more prevalent. Scotland ended Right to Buy in 2016, with implementation concluded by mid-2016.
Due to economic crisis and famine in North Korea in the 1990s, many were forced to leave the country in search of employment elsewhere. Many of them became illegal immigrants, seeking asylum in China, South Korea or other nearby countries. Families that made it to China were often separated, in some cases children even fled North Korea on their own. These orphaned North Korean homeless children living in China are called the Kotjebi.
2000s In 2001, the Scottish Parliament came into place. It was agreed by all parties that a ten-year plan to eradicate homelessness by the end of 2012 would be implemented. The Minister for Housing, Iain Gray, met with the third sector and Local Authorities every six weeks, checking on progress, whilst consultations brought about legislative change, alongside work to prevent homelessness. There was a peak in applications around 2005, but from there onwards figures dropped year on year for the next eight years. However, with a focus on the broader numbers of people experiencing homelessness, many people with higher levels of need got caught in the system. Work from 2017 started to address this, with a framework put in place to work towards a day where everyone in Scotland has a home suitable to meet their needs.
In 2002, research showed that children and families were the largest growing segment of the homeless population in the United States, and this has presented new challenges to agencies.
In the U.S., the government asked many major cities to come up with a ten-year plan to end homelessness. One of the results of this was a "Housing First" solution. The Housing First program offers homeless people access to housing without having to undergo tests for sobriety and drug usage. The Housing First program seems to benefit homeless people in every aspect except for substance abuse, for which the program offers little accountability.
An emerging consensus is that the Housing First program still gives clients a higher chance at retaining their housing once they get it. A few critical voices argue that it misuses resources and does more harm than good; they suggest that it encourages rent-seeking and that there is not yet enough evidence-based research on the effects of this program on the homeless population. Some formerly homeless people, who were finally able to obtain housing and other assets which helped to return to a normal lifestyle, have donated money and volunteer services to the organizations that provided aid to them during their homelessness.Solutions at Work, "Formerly Homeless Boston Man Donates Significant Portion of Social Security Retro-Check to the Organizations and People Who Gave Him a 'Hand Up'" , 2002. Alternatively, some social service entities that help homeless people now employ formerly homeless individuals to assist in the care process.