Page Last updated 14-12-2010
The legal definition of homelessness for England and Wales can be found in the 1996 Housing Act (Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), 1996). A person is homeless if:
Statutorily homeless are households which meet specific criteria of priority need set out in legislation - acutely ill, people fleeing violence, harassment or an emergency, dependent children and young and elderly, and to whom a homelessness duty has been accepted by a local authority. Such households are rarely homeless in the literal sense of being without a roof over their heads, but are more likely to be threatened with the loss of, or are unable to continue with, their current accommodation. Collating data on statutory homelessness alone does not give the complete picture as other vulnerable groups exist who may be at risk of homelessness but for whom there is no statutory duty. Newcastle's homeless service also collects information about people not owed a statutory duty. The legislative split between those homeless people who are owed a statutory duty and those who are not has an impact on the quality of data recorded and there tends to be inferior data about non-statutory cases. There is however a range of data collected by Supporting People for people accessing supported housing services.
For most people who become homeless their lack of accommodation is a symptom rather than a cause of their social exclusion and their acute housing need presents an opportunity to intervene to counter social exclusion.
This needs assessment has been drawn largely from: