I’ve been back in the UK for a few months now.
A few things have struck me after being away for a while. People are angry — really angry. As soon as you get off the plane you encounter people wound up and looking for a row. A trip to the supermarket means road rage, trolley rage, queue rage — anything with even the faintest excuse for confrontation.
But there is one positive thing.
The number of people completely off their heads on drink and drugs in city centres has declined noticeably. I’ve been to Liverpool, Durham, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham and Bristol, and while there were still homeless people, there wasn’t the constant presence of gangs of people intoxicated to the point of chaos.
In fact, the level of visible homelessness felt no worse than Barcelona — a city that used to be far better than the UK on this front.
That’s odd, because the overall level of homelessness hasn’t changed very much while I was in Spain.
A definitional note
Homelessness and rough sleeping are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Homelessness is a broad category that includes anyone without a stable, permanent home — people in temporary accommodation, hostels, refuges, sofa-surfing with friends or family, or at risk of losing their home. Rough sleeping is a much narrower and more extreme subset, referring specifically to people sleeping outside or in places not meant for habitation, such as doorways, cars or tents.
All rough sleepers are homeless, but most homeless people are not rough sleepers. That distinction matters, because rough sleeping is the most visible form of homelessness, but not the most common.
Since the new government took office in mid-2024, official data shows little or no reduction in either homelessness or rough sleeping. The most recent published figures — which are released with a time lag — indicate that overall homelessness remains high, while rough sleeping has at best plateaued rather than fallen. Although ministers have announced new initiatives and funding, these have not yet translated into clear improvements in the headline numbers.
So what’s going on?
The visible change
Since taking office, the government has introduced a range of measures aimed at the underlying drivers of rough sleeping rather than simply its visibility. These include increased funding for NHS mental health services — particularly crisis care and community support — expansion of specialist outreach teams working with people sleeping rough who have severe alcohol and drug dependence, and greater support for local authorities to develop housing-first and wrap-around care models.
Councils have also been given additional resources to improve coordination between housing services, health care and addiction support, with new guidance encouraging integrated case management for people with multiple and complex needs. While it is far too early for official data to show large shifts, frontline services report a reduction in visible rough sleeping among people with the most acute substance and mental health problems.
These initiatives matter.
When I worked in the NHS, there were large numbers of people with serious mental health problems who had fallen out of treatment, were self-medicating with drink and drugs, and were living rough. Groups of outdoor drinkers and drug users became a feature of big cities.
The Assertive Outreach programme did exactly what the name suggests: tracked people down, got them back into treatment where possible, and at the very least into housing and harm-reduction programmes.
Then I moved to the Department for Work and Pensions. I was there in 2010 when Ian Duncan Smith became Secretary of State. Changes to the benefit system were pushed through with no concern for the impact on people with severe mental illness, and no regard for the knock-on costs to the NHS. A decade of hard-won progress was flushed away by incompetent ministers and ignorant special advisers.
Once again, city centres became occupied by people who were mentally ill, drunk, drugged, or all three.
When the homelessness data is refreshed, it will be interesting to see what the longer-term impact of the new approach is. In the meantime, it is undeniably a luxury to be able to go for a late-night drink without having to dodge gangs of people in crisis.
Veterans and Homelessness
I read a lot online about Labour supposedly prioritising asylum seekers over veterans for housing.
This is simply untrue.
Asylum seekers do not receive priority for social housing over veterans. They are generally housed in separate, temporary accommodation provided through the asylum system and are not eligible to join local authority housing registers in the same way as UK citizens. Veterans, by contrast, can qualify for additional priority under homelessness legislation, with many councils explicitly recognising former service as a factor in assessing vulnerability.
Claims that asylum seekers are being housed ahead of veterans reflect misunderstanding — or deliberate distortion — of how the system actually works.
Official figures on veteran homelessness are inevitably estimates rather than precise counts, because veteran status is not always consistently recorded. That said, the broad picture is clear. Survey-based estimates suggest that several thousand veterans are homeless in the UK when homelessness is defined broadly. Rough sleeping among veterans is a smaller subset — typically in the low hundreds at any given snapshot — but veterans are disproportionately represented among people sleeping rough relative to their share of the population.
Veterans can be more vulnerable to homelessness for a combination of structural and personal reasons linked to military service and the transition to civilian life. Many leave the armed forces after years in a highly institutionalised environment, where housing, income and routine are organised for them. The sudden loss of that structure can be profoundly destabilising.
Some struggle to translate military skills into civilian employment. Others have limited experience navigating housing systems or benefits. Trauma and mental health issues, including PTSD, depression and anxiety, are more common among veterans than the general population and can make it harder to sustain work or relationships. Alcohol and substance misuse often develop as coping mechanisms, compounded by stigma and a culture of self-reliance that discourages help-seeking.
None of this makes homelessness inevitable. But it does help explain why a minority of veterans are at higher risk when support breaks down or transitions are poorly managed.
How policy made it worse
The rise in veteran homelessness over the 2010s and early 2020s cannot be separated from policy choices made under successive Conservative governments. Austerity-linked cuts weakened local authority housing support and outreach services just as need was rising. At the same time, reductions and restructuring in the armed forces increased the number of veterans leaving the forces and narrowed the support available to people. The Braverman/Shapps/Braverman period had the biggest increase.
Funding for mental health, addiction services and specialist veterans’ support was constrained, leaving fewer resources to intervene early or provide sustained accommodation. The safety net thinned, and more veterans fell through it.
Since taking office, Labour has sought to change direction. The government has moved to strengthen the Armed Forces Covenant, expanding its legal force and widening the duties placed on public bodies. It has also appointed senior former soldiers to ministerial and advisory roles, both to signal seriousness and to ensure lived experience informs policy.
These changes will not produce instant results. But they represent a shift away from discretionary goodwill towards a more systematic, accountable approach — one that treats veterans’ housing, health and wellbeing as obligations of the state rather than matters for charity or culture-war point-scoring.