The hidden homeless are those who don’t sleep rough but rely on temporary solutions such as sleeping in vehicles or staying with friends.
Photograph: Michael Overbeck Photography/Stocksy United
Mark, a 35-year-old former soldier from Kent, has spent the past seven years sofa-surfing. It’s a term that perhaps sounds carefree or edgy, but is anything but. “I’ve slept on a sofa, a mattress in a corner, had a spare room. I have no stability any more – you don’t feel like you belong anywhere,” he says. “You’re begging favours so you’re always living by someone else’s rules. You want your own place, your own shower, your own bed. After a while complacency kicks in, then your mates begin to get irritated with the situation and you get irritated. Arguments start, the friendship breaks down. I don’t talk to many of them any more.”
Mark is one of the “hidden homeless” – people who have no place of their own but who avoid sleeping rough by finding a temporary solution, such as staying with family members or friends. Others live in squats (although squatting in a residential building has been illegal since September 2012) or other insecure accommodation such as cars, or they get into inappropriate relationships in order to keep a roof over their heads.
Research by the charity Crisis indicates that about 62% of single homeless people are hidden homeless [pdf] and may not show up in official figures. Many of these are “sofa surfers” like Mark, who rely on the goodwill of others, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes longer.
The charity Homeless Link calculated that 4,677 people slept rough in England on any one night in 2018. But the hidden homeless don’t appear in these counts. Shelter estimates the true figure for homeless people in Britain to be at least 320,000 – more than the population of Hull.
Part of the problem is that defining what constitutes hidden homeless is more difficult than defining rough sleeping. “It’s very broad, tricky to define and difficult to measure,” explains Paul Noblet, head of public affairs at Centrepoint. “There is no proper measure of being classed as [being of] no-fixed-abode, and the criteria for a council having a legal duty to you is very much a grey area.”
At its core, these are people who are not registered by local authorities as being in need of housing assistance. Often, like Mark, they may not even consider themselves homeless, just as we often say we are “between jobs”. Many long-term homeless people begin as sofa surfers.
“I had a job as a train driver for eight years and a two-bed flat, but because of some bad decisions it all fell away,” explains Mark. “I left my job and my relationship collapsed, so I went travelling and thought of myself as a carefree hippy. I came back and began sofa surfing with mates. It was meant to be a short-term thing but it went on for years.
I used to have a couple of really big bags and a big suitcase plus pillows and duvets but over a period I’ve shed more and more stuff, just trimming down the things I need so I can move on easily. All I have now is a day backpack and a holdall.”
It’s a precarious situation that offers no promise of long-term security or peace of mind. The chronic lack of stability can inflict huge damage on a person, making the journey back to independence extremely difficult. The longer the situation lasts, the harder the journey. Everything becomes much harder, particularly holding down a job. People are forced into secrecy for fear of revealing their circumstances and losing employment or being stigmatised.
Mark’s parents don’t know he is homeless. “I’ve become a bit of a nomad and I never really thought about myself like that, until someone pointed it out,” he says.
In November, Mark finally accepted he is homeless and in need of help. He decided to register with his local council as homeless and he is talking with Skullfades, a charitable foundation set up by a former army colleague, with the aim of piecing his life back together. He plans to travel up to Manchester shortly to begin a new life working in the charity’s barber shops.
“I want to learn a trade because I’ve never really had one, and moving up there will relocate me away from all the issues I have back down south,” he says. “I’m quite a positive person but having no place wears you down. I’m shot mentally. I need a fresh start, some support to get my life back on track.”
HSBC UK is working with local housing and homelessness charities to provide bank accounts to people without a fixed address, helping to break the cycle of financial exclusion. To find out more about this, and what else HSBC UK is doing to support local communities, visit hsbc.co.uk/togetherwethrive
