In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a heightened awareness of ethnic inequality in the UK. Despite some recent studies on housing conditions in the context of the pandemic, little attention has been paid to how racial inequality and homelessness intersect.
Even before the current cost of living and energy crises, homelessness across the board was on the rise. Since 2009, the growing housing crisis has resulted in increases in most measures of homelessness. England in particular has seen numbers rise, even though special provision during the pandemic did temporarily bring some measures down.
A study in 2005 already found that in every region in England, ethnic minority households were over-represented among those deemed homeless by local authorities. To gauge how things have evolved since, we recently carried out a statistical analysis. We found that black and minoritised ethnic communities, taken as a whole, experience disproportionate levels of homelessness in the UK.
