Universities have a bigger role to play in preventing homelessness

It’s been four years since I had a go at starting a national conversation about student homelessness.

What’s happened since? To be candid, not much. We’re still a long way from quantifying its scale or mapping its patterns, let alone testing evidence-based prevention strategies.

In a debate paper published by the Higher Education Policy Institute in 2022, I suggested UK universities and funding bodies had been incurious about the scale and nature of student homelessness despite a cross-sector push to widen participation in higher education. Clearly this is changing the profile of student bodies and means admitting more students who, according to the data, have higher risk factors associated with homelessness.

Soon we had real-world illustrations of this, including at high tariff institutions, amid severe shortages of student accommodation in university cities such as Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester and Durham at the start of the 2022–23 academic year. There were reports of freshers sleeping for extended periods on friends’ sofas or floors. Others resorted to spending their limited budgets on hotels or hiring rooms via Airbnb.

The causes in one city – Glasgow – were captured in a study led by Professor Ken Gibb at the University of Glasgow: a post-Covid surge in UK students admissions, the return of international students, cost-of-living pressures meaning higher bills plus rent made letting less affordable for many students including in purpose-built student accommodation, and anti-student sentiment among private landlords.

Thankfully, we’ve not seen a repeat of these patterns on the same scale, not least because of restrictions placed on international students. In truth, however, the underlying picture of student homelessness appears to be very different.

Hidden in plain sight

An analysis of ten London universities by Joseph Usher at the London School of Economics, published in 2025, said students who experience homelessness “often sofa surf and fail to report themselves as homeless, with many not realising they could be considered homeless due to shame, stigma, and a lack of understanding amongst students.”

The study outlined that these students face significant challenges in attending university, completing their studies, and engaging with student life.

Support for students at risk of homelessness was often unclear and inconsistent, the report noted, and a pattern of informal or discretionary support was likely to cause confusion for students in crisis and to place significant burdens on individual staff. It suggested that housing status should be included in the information collected when students first enrol at university to identify new undergraduates at risk.

The Scottish government commissioned qualitative research by RSM UK Consulting, with expert advice Heriot-Watt University, published in April 2025. It identified higher and further education students as among five groups most often cited by interviewees as at risk of “hidden” homelessness. Third sector organisations told researchers they had supported students who were predominantly sofa surfing and living in overcrowded households, but occasionally reported students sleeping in tents.

Among the causes for hidden student homelessness given were a lack of awareness of support available. Some said “certain circumstances of homelessness had become normalised, leading some students to not perceive themselves as homeless.” The report recommended educating and supporting wider public services that come into contact with people experiencing or at risk of hidden homelessness, and screening programmes in schools, colleges and universities to identify young people at risk of homelessness.

More systematic study of student homelessness in Canada has been conducted at multiple university sites over several years by the Post-Secondary Student Homelessness Research Network. It estimates that about five per cent of students aged 17 to 24 face forms of homelessness and housing insecurity each year.

Patterns and prevalence of student homelessness in Canada are not directly comparable to those in the UK, due particularly to an over-representation of indigenous students who experience homelessness and housing precarity in Canada. Other reasons for caution are the profile of Canada’s international students, who are also disproportionately impacted, and its model of student finance, which is very different from that in the UK.

Nonetheless, the scale of projected student homelessness in Canada, a rich country with a well-developed university sector, is pretty breathtaking – five per cent. With 2.8 million students in the UK, do we really think our system is immune?

What should happen next

Further inquiry into the scale and profile of hidden forms of student homelessness seems long overdue.

Recording students’ housing status in matriculation data is a simple step. A light-touch universal screening survey into students’ housing circumstances could be introduced at very limited cost. It could start as a pilot at one or a handful of universities. Universities should also review their procedures for supporting students at risk of homelessness – prevention ought to be the guiding principle.

Student unions should press for this, and get involved as critical friends. Such data would enable institutions to identify students experiencing and – crucially – at future risk of homelessness, and offer housing advice, short-term financial aid or referral to other support as appropriate.

Part of the puzzle is that we have a glaring research gap within a higher education sector whose core purposes are research and teaching.

In terms of teaching materials, it is wearisome to see examples of tropes and stereotypes of homelessness in university teaching materials. Must webpages and slides that talk about homelessness be illustrated with an image of a man bedded down in a doorway or a tent on a street?

Graduates of many degree courses are likely to deal with homelessness in a professional capacity: medicine, education, social work, law, architecture, housing studies, theology, sociology, psychology, criminology. Let’s make sure that content about homelessness is evidence-based and non-stigmatising.

At the outset, I said not much has happened on student homelessness. That’s not fair. The University of Glasgow ran a multi-year homelessness programme. London School of Economics launched a staff and student homelessness initiative. A toolkit for responding to homelessness in further and higher education was created by the University Peer Network on Homelessness. The Scottish government’s research was commendable.

They’re up for a national conversation on homelessness. Who’ll join them?