Women’s homelessness
Women Experiencing Homelessness: The Silent Struggle We Can No Longer Ignore
Women experiencing homelessness are not absent. They are surviving out of sight, and too often that means they are also missing from the very systems designed to help them.
When most people picture homelessness, they imagine somebody sleeping in a doorway, under a bridge or in a tent. That image matters, but it does not show the whole reality, especially when we are talking about women.
Women experiencing homelessness are often missing from the picture because many of them are doing everything they can not to be seen. They ride buses through the night, sit in hospital waiting rooms, walk for hours, stay with strangers or return to unsafe relationships because sleeping visibly can place them at even greater risk of violence, exploitation and sexual assault.
That distinction matters because when a woman is not seen by an official count, she can also be missed by outreach teams, excluded from support and left out of the funding and policy decisions that are supposed to protect her.
Homelessness can look very different for women
“I stayed in violent relationships just to avoid being alone on the streets. I thought, ‘At least I’m safe from what’s out there.’ But I wasn’t safe. I was just invisible.”
Kerri Douglas, Homelessness Inside Out
For many women, homelessness is tied to a long history of trauma. It may begin with childhood abuse, domestic violence, family breakdown, leaving care, poverty or exploitation. By the time a woman loses her home, she may already have spent years surviving situations that nobody around her fully understood.
This is why we must be careful when we judge the choices a woman makes in crisis. Staying with an abusive partner, sleeping on somebody’s sofa or accepting shelter from a stranger may look like a choice from the outside, but when every available option carries danger, it is survival.
I remember meeting girls on the streets who would sleep with a man simply to have somewhere to stay. They needed a shower, somewhere to cry in private and somewhere to feel human for one night. They did not want to exchange access to their bodies for safety. They were surviving a complete lack of safe options.
We should not question her choices before we question the lack of choices that brought her there.
Making hidden women visible
The latest Women’s Rough Sleeping Census gives us some of the clearest evidence yet that official figures are missing women.
The 2025 census, led by Single Homeless Project and Solace Women’s Aid alongside Crisis and Change Grow Live, used a gender informed approach across 101 local authorities in England. It found that in some areas, as many as ten times more women were sleeping rough than official government snapshot counts had identified.
local authorities took part, building a stronger national picture of women’s rough sleeping.
reported sleeping in places excluded from official counts or staying awake through the night.
had walked around all night rather than sleep visibly and risk violence or exploitation.
women were identified across six areas where official snapshots had recorded no women at all.
A further 27 per cent of women surveyed had stayed with strangers or new acquaintances. These are not abstract numbers. They show women making impossible decisions in an attempt to stay alive and avoid harm.
Perhaps one of the most shocking findings was that official government snapshots recorded no women sleeping rough across six local authority areas, yet the census identified 162 women in those same places. The women were there. The usual system simply did not see them.
This is exactly why the census is so important. If our definition of rough sleeping is built mainly around somebody visibly bedding down outside, it will always miss many of the ways women survive. Poor data then becomes poor decision making. Services appear less necessary than they really are, funding does not match the scale of need and women continue to fall through gaps that should never have existed.
Thank you for helping women be seen
I want to express my genuine gratitude to Single Homeless Project and Solace Women’s Aid for leading this vital census, alongside Crisis and Change Grow Live, and to the local authorities, frontline services and partner organisations that helped make it possible.
Most importantly, thank you to every woman who trusted somebody with her experience. Behind every percentage is a real person who has lived through fear, uncertainty and situations most people will never have to imagine. Sharing those experiences provides the evidence needed to challenge systems, reshape services and demand better.
This census is not just another report. It gives women’s homelessness the visibility it has been denied. It helps outreach teams understand where and when to look, shows commissioners why safe women only provision is essential, and connects homelessness with domestic abuse, health, trauma and violence against women and girls.
What women centred support should look like
Being counted is only the beginning. Women need somewhere safe to go once they are found, and that support must recognise the realities of trauma, domestic abuse and exploitation.
Women only spaces
Safe accommodation and drop in spaces where women are not placed alongside people who make them feel at risk.
Flexible access
Entry rules that understand crisis, fear and the fact that survival rarely follows a neat or predictable path.
Trauma informed staff
Teams trained to understand domestic abuse, exploitation and survival responses without judgement.
Joined up services
Stronger partnerships across housing, health, substance use and violence against women and girls services.
Relationships built on trust
Listening without judgement and allowing women to disclose their experiences when they feel safe enough to do so.
The women’s drop in I accessed helped me because it gave me something very simple but incredibly important: a space where I could just be a woman. Safety is not an added extra in homelessness support. For women, it can be the difference between accepting help and returning to danger.
People do not heal in systems. They heal in relationships. The support workers I remember are the ones who stayed, listened and did not reduce me to my behaviour or my circumstances. They saw the human being beneath the survival response.
We cannot end what we refuse to see
If we are serious about ending homelessness, we must understand it from the inside out. We must recognise the woman riding the night bus, the mother afraid that asking for help could lead to losing her children, the young woman staying in an unsafe home and the survivor returning to an abuser because the alternative feels even more dangerous.
Women experiencing homelessness do not need more judgement. They need safety, dignity, understanding and services designed around the realities of their lives.
The Women’s Rough Sleeping Census has helped bring those realities out of the shadows. Now we need to listen to what the evidence is telling us and act on it.
A woman should not have to become visible on a pavement before she is considered homeless enough to deserve help.
Understand the story before the street
Homelessness Inside Out is an online learning experience created to help individuals, frontline teams and organisations understand homelessness through the human being experiencing it.
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