Changing the law in the UK to include single homeless people

Crisis, a UK-based homelessness organisation that focuses on single homeless people, led a brave and innovative campaign to change the law in the UK. Their three years of campaigning led to victory – the Homelessness Reduction Act, which came into force in April 2018. Under the new act, councils are obliged to offer help to all people – single or families – threatened with losing their homes.

“Now, we can no longer see the homeless as either deserving or undeserving of support,” says Matt Downie, the director of policy and external affairs at Crisis UK. “Embedded in the law is a universal principle – that everyone who is homeless should get some assistance and that everyone threatened with homelessness should be offered help to prevent it.”

The Homeless Persons Act was established in the United Kingdom 40 years ago, following a decade of campaigning. This act sets out what councils across the UK must do to help homeless people and gives the right to accommodation to some households. However, the Act prioritises families over single people, which means that over the last four decades, single homeless people have been affected the most. Many homeless organisations have encountered difficulties in addressing the consequences of the exclusion of single people in the Homeless Persons Act.