Available open access under CC-BY-NC license. Homelessness is unequivocally devastating. In the UK, people affected by homelessness are ten times more likely to die than their peers in the general population, yet we still miss important opportunities to adequately address the issue. The Centre for Homelessness Impact brings together this urgent book gathering the insights and experiences of leaders in government, academia and the third sector to present new evidence-based strategies to end homelessness. Demonstrating why and how a new movement is needed that embraces data and evidence as integral to ending homelessness effectively, this book provides crucial methods to underpin future policy, practice and funding decisions.

Poverty, and calls to end it, date back centuries. Even in prosperous modern times, despite the huge transformation of society, poverty has persisted. The challenge is getting harder, not easier, because of more recent changes in society such as the social distance between people in poverty and others, changing family structures (and our mixed views about them) and changing community patterns. The recent economic crisis seems set to leave us with a very different economy in which some may never work. This book looks back at the struggle to rid the country of poverty and asks if the struggle is worth it. What would a poverty free country be like if we could overcome the obstacles which impede progress?