The housing charity Shelter used data from four sets of official 2016 statistics and calculated 254,514 people in England were homeless.The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 places a new duty on local authorities in England to assist people threatened with homelessness within 56 days and to assess, prevent and relieve homelessness for all eligible applicants including single homeless people from April 2018. Before the 2017 HRA, homeless households were defined and measured as those who were owed a main homelessness duty by local authorities. But since 2018, the definition of homeless households has broadened as households are owed a new relief duty and a prevention duty. The main homelessness duty definition has not been changed by the 2017 HRA. However, these households are now only owed a main duty if their homelessness has not been successfully prevented or relieved. In 2019–20, 288,470 households were owed the new prevention or relief duties, which is four times the number of households owed the main duty in 2017–18 prior to implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act.The picture in Scotland is considerably different, with law that entitles everyone to a roof over their head if they are homeless. This accommodation is often in the form of somewhere temporary, until something permanent becomes available. Though across the course of 2022 this will change, reducing the use of temporary accommodation, in line with the Homeless and Rough Sleeping Action Group (HARSAG) recommendations.
Summarized in Child homelessness on the rise in US Archived 29 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine (November 2014), Palm Beach Post
Utah found a brilliantly effective solution for homelessness (February 2015), Natasha Bertrand, Business Insider