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Emergency and Temporary Accommodation
This page is about the issue of emergency and temporary accommodation for homeless people. Some homeless people - those seen as being in "priority need" - are entitled to have accommodation provide by a local authority. Others, including many single homeless people and couples without children, do not have a statutory entitlement to emergency accommodation and may have to rely on voluntary sector hostels or sleep rough.
Our award-winning "Good practice companion for emergency accommodation for homeless people" has been revised and updated thanks to funding from the Housing Corporation and is now AVAILABLE FREE online as the Hostels Handbook in our Good Practice Handbooks microsite.
What's New?
- Communities and Local Government (CLG) has announced £70 million investment to expand the Places of Change Programme to more hostels and day centres across the country.
The Issues
Homeless Link's regional development work under the places of change agenda links with providers across the English regions to improve the services and opportunities available to homeless people in hostels.
Regional workers also support CLG's Places of Change Programme, which provides funding to transform hostels and build some new ones, with the objective of making hostels places of change. See the DCLG's Hostels Review Toolkit.
Leading Places of Change is a leadership programme for service managers in the homelessness sector. It has been developed jointly by the Chartered Institute of Housing, Homeless Link and Broadway and is funded by Communities and Local Government.
Further Resources
- See our Are you homeless? webpage.
- Resource Information Services has published an Analysis of Emergency Accommodation in the UK based on its Emergency Accommodation Directory.
- IN 2005 the Pan London Providers Group published a research report London’s Hostels for Homeless People in the 21st Century: , and Far More than a Bed , a summary.