Plenty of rural communities surround our major cities - particularly here in Yorkshire. While many of us will associate homelessness with bustling cities, with their high concentration of people and visible homeless communities, growing numbers in rural areas find themselves without a roof over their heads but don’t register in mainstream statistics.
In a 2023 study by the University of Kent and the University of Southampton, frontline workers and NGOs were surveyed about rural homelessness. The results?
- Over 90% of people surveyed have seen rural homelessness increase in the previous five years.
- Nearly 85% said their role as frontline workers had become harder in the last five years.
- 81% believe rural homelessness is a very different experience to more urban settings.
What’s happening here?
Lack of resource allocation
One take is that a lack of exposure has led to a lack of resource allocation.
Statistics from the DLCH showed a dramatic difference in financial aid for urban and rural communities. Urban local authorities received about £7.15 per homeless person, with rural local authorities receiving around £2.50 per person, despite the cost of living crisis hitting rural communities a lot harder on average.
Harder to reach
People experiencing rural homelessness will often take to farmland or woodland for shelter, making them much harder for outreach teams to find. Without this support, it can be difficult for people to start accessing the services and help they need to break the cycle.
Even if outreach teams do make contact with individuals, services are often so dispersed or inaccessible that many people struggle to make their appointments or access drop-in services.
These isolated locations can also leave individuals incredibly vulnerable to assaults, violence or vandalism. With fewer people around, there are hundreds of stories of sexual violence, tents being burnt down, and possessions being stolen.
Shame and stigma
Especially in wealthy, prosperous rural areas, there is still a lot of stigma and shame attached to becoming homeless. For many people in these areas, it’s a huge barrier to accessing support, and it often means individuals will fly under the radar.
What’s being done about it?
English Rural are calling for urgent action from the government, including:
- Future homelessness and rough strategies to give greater consideration to the needs of rural communities and the ‘at risk’ people living in them.
- More consistent, reliable and affordable travel links between rural areas, towns, and cities.
- Improving the processes for identifying and recording homelessness in these areas.
- Implementing new support services that address the mental, social and physical toll of isolation and homelessness in rural communities.
- Increased funding allocation for social housing in rural areas.
Our Simon on the Streets outreach team works tirelessly to connect with some of the hardest-to-reach individuals going through homelessness, whether they’re located in the inner-cities or rural communities.
If you’d like to support our work, find out how you can get involved now.