At the end of 2025, Crisis and Heriot-Watt University published their research into hidden homelessness. The research suggests that more than 200,000 families in the UK are currently sleeping on friends’ or sometimes strangers’ sofas, taking refuge in industrial buildings, or living out of cars, sheds, or other ‘non-typical’ structures such as public toilets (yes, you heard us right on that last one).
This landmark research has uncovered the brutal reality of hidden homelessness and sofa surfing. We’ve also heard about it first-hand from the people we’ve supported.
In 2025 alone, the SOTS team supported over 100 people who were sofa-surfing in Leeds.
This is their reality.
It only takes one event to force someone into homelessness
The truth is that none of us is ever that far away from experiencing homelessness. One lost job, one missed payslip, one relationship breakdown, one broken tenancy agreement – these are all things that can lead to the constant uncertainty of having nowhere to call home.
Stories from Simon on the Streets
‘G’ was working and was married with children. When G’s relationship broke down, things started to unravel.
G turned to drugs and alcohol to cope. When this escalated, he lost his job and eventually, his family home. As you can imagine, this all had an enormous impact on his mental health, and he found himself experiencing homelessness for the first time.
For the first few weeks, G stayed on a friend’s sofa. But after a while, the friendship became strained when he couldn’t say when he’d be leaving. After that, G would travel all over the country to stay with people. When he had nowhere to go, he’d sleep rough. He started feeling ashamed to ask his friends for any more help.
When Simon on the Streets got involved, we supported G in accessing safe accommodation and local drug and alcohol support. Once he was getting the right support, we were able to help him start rebuilding his relationships with friends and family.
Instability is the norm when you’re sofa surfing
Experiencing any kind of homelessness creates huge instability in a person’s life. Sofa surfing can create even more instability as individuals tend to move around so much more. 40% of survey respondents said they’d change locations 6 or more times in a typical month.
This can make it incredibly difficult to keep important belongings and documents with you, as many items get lost, damaged, or even stolen along the way. This can make maintaining a thread between them and their ‘old life’ incredibly difficult, not to mention that finding work and accommodation becomes increasingly challenging.
Stories from Simon on the Streets
‘D’ has been in the UK for 12 years, but he has no evidence to support his settled status claim. Due to some legal issues in his home country, he’s been unable to apply for a passport. He’s been staying with another gentleman for several years in a small bedsit where they live, cook and sleep in the same small space. There’s not enough room for both of them, and they rely on food banks to make sure they get food to eat.
Until D can progress with his EUSS application, he has no way to access any welfare and can’t hope to live in a proper home.
Since the Simon on the Streets team has been working with D, we’ve been accompanying him to GP appointments to address some health issues, but until his EUSS claim progresses, he has no other option but to sofa surf.
Higher risk of violence and sexual exploitation
Anyone experiencing hidden homelessness is in significant danger, especially when relying on strangers for accommodation. The Crisis and Heriot-Watt University survey found that almost 60% of people felt ‘afraid for their life’ at some stage of their hidden homelessness experience. This rises to 70% in women.
The survey had fewer female respondents, but their responses showed they were disproportionately in highly dangerous and traumatic situations while sofa surfing. 66% of their female respondents had experienced some kind of violence or abuse while experiencing hidden homelessness. This could partly be because they were more likely to stay with strangers to avoid sleeping on the streets.
Stories from Simon on the Streets
Our team had worked with ‘T’ for many years. She would regularly form relationships with men so that she could stay in their property and off the streets. Unfortunately, this meant that on a number of occasions, she was sexually exploited, violently abused and raped. While these incidents were reported to the police, no convictions were made.
Over the five years Simon on the Streets supported T, we helped her get out of the dangerous properties she was staying in. She’d often leave with no belongings.
While she was offered temporary accommodation, TF would regularly go back to her perpetrators. It was clear to our outreach team that she needed more thorough support to recover from these traumatic relationships and to break the cycle for good.
Together with T, Simon on the Streets helped her reconnect with her sister. We were with her as she started rebuilding her relationship and support system. We’re over the moon to tell you that T is now back in safe, stable accommodation.
Hidden homelessness statistics are still left out of many mainstream conversations about homelessness, because it’s still incredibly difficult to measure the scale of the issue.
We hope that by raising awareness, more people will know they can turn to services like Simon on the Streets if they find themselves sofa surfing or experiencing other forms of hidden homelessness.
To help keep our teams out in the community and able to help more people like G, D and TF, please donate to Simon on the Streets. We can’t do it without you.