LONDON (Sky News) – The
number of young people who said they were homeless, or about to become homeless, has risen by nearly 7,000 in the last year, a charity said.
Research by Centrepoint found 135,800 young people aged 16-24 told their local council they were homeless in 2022-23, up from 129,000 the year before - a rise of 6,800, Sky News reported.
That is around 372 per day, and a new person facing homelessness every four minutes, the charity says.
London was the worst affected place in England and Wales with 20,200 homeless young people.
Centrepoint also found more than three in 10 young people were not assessed when they approached their local authority for help.
In response to the mounting crisis, 120 youth and youth homelessness charities have backed a petition urging ministers to create a national strategy to tackle the problem.
Ben, who didn’t want to reveal his full name, has been homeless on and off since he was 11. At 19, he was kicked out of the family home after being accused of a crime he said he did not commit. The case was later dropped.
He said he was forced on to the streets, but found himself under mental health care, after being awake for four days in a row. These experiences nearly drove him to suicide.
He said, “I was in the train station, the underground and about to walk in front of a train, and someone stopped me. I was sectioned for a week because of my sleep deprivation and [my] anxiety.”
One of the charities leading the calls for a national strategy is New Horizon Youth Centre, which supports young Londoners who find themselves homeless.
The centre’s concern is that these new figures are the tip of the iceberg, as only 51% of young people using their services say they approached their council to report themselves as homeless.
Over the summer months, when New Horizon Youth Centre is usually quietest, their staff said there was a 69% increase in demand by daily users.
Chief Cxecutive Phil Kerry said, “If I arrive at a centre, sometimes I have to step over people in sleeping bags. We’re fed up of having young people crying, feeling suicidal, with nowhere to go.”
In 2022, the government launched End Rough Sleeping For Good, a £2bln programme aimed at making the UK a “world leader in its approach to ending rough sleeping”.
This includes investment of up to £500mn in funding to local authorities across England from April 2022 to March 2025.