What's it all about
What is Homelessness?
Homelessness not only applies to people sleeping rough on the streets or without shelter. It also includes those without stable shelter who are in emergency accommodation, boarding houses, squatting, sleeping in cars, hostels, hotels, ‘couch surfing’ or at immediate risk of becoming homeless.
Rosanne Haggerty suggests “the challenge of homelessness, how to approach it, how to solve it, has bedevilled communities throughout the world.
In advanced democracies, where homelessness during peacetime was rare until the last twenty five years, homelessness has been particularly disturbing and uncomfortable to deal with: too complicated, too vast, too much of an affront to our society’s faith in social and economic progress.”
The effects of homelessness are many, complex and serious. Being without stable accommodation greatly effects the health and well being of individuals both physically and mentally, can reduce life expectancy, lead to family break up, increases vulnerability to physical and sexual assault, effects individuals’ ability to access support services, decreases their chances of education and employment and profoundly diminishes the dignity of life.
Homelesness is very expensive
From an economic perspective, governments are realising that the cost of solving homelessness and providing vulnerable people with a stable home and a chance at a decent life is considerably less than doing nothing at all.
Providing appropriate housing, services, education support and training for vulnerable young people, improving living standards – these things all cost less to provide than what is spent to cope with the damage done if those investments were not made.
Common Ground’s approach to solving homelessness recognises that people need support to develop the skills and independence to enable them to move back into broader society. Common Ground pioneered supportive housing that combines affordable housing with on site services such as counselling, job training and placement, health services and help with life skills such as cooking and managing money.
Common Ground’s success has demonstrated that providing housing and support is cheaper than emergency accommodation and more effective in stopping the cycle of homelessness. The creative transformation of under-used urban buildings for housing, their tenancy blend and mixed-use strategy, has provided many other benefits in economic growth, revitalising city centres, building communities and making housing sustainable.