Our statement on the latest London rough sleeping numbers

According to the latest Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) report, between January and March 2026 outreach teams recorded 3,944 people sleeping rough in London. This represents a decrease compared to numbers from the last year, but is still an unacceptable level that we should not see as normal.

Here is what our CEO, Jo Carter, had to say:

“The latest figures on rough sleeping in London highlight the worrying situation we find ourselves in ahead of the first provisions of the Renters’ Rights Act coming into effect. From tomorrow, the end of Section 21 evictions will give renters greater security – a change which took years of campaigning and is worth celebrating. Unfortunately, on its own this will not be enough to stop homelessness from increasing.

We see the scale of the problem through our front-line work. Over the coldest months of the year, we run London’s largest network of emergency winter night shelters, and the level of need this winter remained far higher than we could accommodate. We received more than 1,300 applications for spaces, and were forced to close registrations for men guests several times due to the high level of demand. Action from the government to prevent people from needing services like ours could not be more urgent.

The Renters’ Rights Act represents a positive step forward, but needs to be followed up with a serious plan for tackling housing affordability and dramatically expanding the supply of social housing. If this happens, we can start to make statistics like today’s a thing of the past.”