News
Tonight the Prime Minister announced a £442 million national drive to end rough sleeping, with a promise to offer everyone who needs it a route off the streets by Christmas, and a national summit this autumn.
We welcome it. The funding matters, the urgency matters, and a government willing to say plainly that no one should sleep in a doorway is good news.
But if we are serious about ending rough sleeping, we cannot only wait until someone is already on the streets. We have to stop them getting there. And no group's journey into homelessness is more predictable, or more preventable, than young people leaving care.
Around a quarter of all homeless people have been in care. Analysis of official homelessness figures by the charity Become shows care leavers are around nine times more likely to face homelessness than their peers. And government figures show that 4,610 care leavers aged 18 to 20 faced homelessness in England in 2024/25, a rise of 37% in five years, with their homelessness rising at twice the rate of the general population.
Across the UK, Centrepoint estimates that 123,934 young people faced homelessness in 2024-25. That is roughly one young person every four minutes.
These are not accidents of bad luck. They are the same young people falling through the same gap, at the same moment: when support falls away at 18, often faster than it does for young people who can lean on family, long before they are ready to stand on their own. This is not an individual failing. It is a system that stops supporting young people at exactly the point they still need it.
The good news is simple. If we can see it coming, we can prevent it.
At Step by Step, this is what our Supported Lodgings service does every day. Someone with a spare room offers a young person a home and a bit of stability at the very moment they would otherwise fall into homelessness. Our hosts are never left to cope alone: we train them, pay an allowance and give them a dedicated support worker throughout. We are the largest Supported Lodgings provider in the country, and the first to be inspected by Ofsted, which awarded us the highest possible rating.
It works. It builds independence rather than crisis. And it costs roughly half what other supported accommodation costs. The bigger saving comes later: Crisis calculates that preventing 40,000 people from becoming homeless for a year would save the public purse £370 million, because a young person helped to stay housed does not go on to need years of far more expensive crisis support.
Prevention is a better use of limited public money. It is also kinder. And the Government is starting to recognise it: new statutory guidance published this month names supported lodgings as a recommended way to house care leavers.
The Prime Minister is asking who will play their part. Here is our answer.
If you have a spare room and want to change a young person's life, become a Supported Lodgings host. We work across Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, West Berkshire and West Sussex, and we always need more hosts. You offer the room; we are with you every step of the way. If that could be you, we would love to hear from you.
And to the Government: when the national summit meets this autumn, bring the organisations that stop homelessness before it starts to the table. Ending rough sleeping will always need emergency help for the people on our streets today. But it will only last if we stop the next generation ever reaching them.
That is what taking a stand against youth homelessness really means.
Ever wondered what actually happens inside a youth homelessness charity? Our Open Days are your chance to find out. Come and see our work up close, look round our Aldershot Foyer, and meet the team who help young people take their next step towards independence.
