BetterThe image that comes to mind is a moment: someone loses everything, and the next day they are on the street. It is almost never how it happens.
And this is not an opinion about how people slide. It is how the United Nations defines the thing, in a General Assembly resolution, and in a typology that counts thirteen steps before the pavement.
The UN writes that homelessness “is not limited to the mere physical absence of housing”. The reference typology lists thirteen categoriesincluding staying temporarily with friends, having no legal tenancy, and living under threat of eviction. The expert group frames homelessness as a societal rather than an individual flaw. And the UN admits its last global count dates from 2005.
The textWhat the UN actually wrote
In December 2023 the General Assembly adopted resolution 78/172. Its wording matters, because it is one of the few places where an international body states what homelessness is rather than what should be done about it.
“Homelessness is not limited to the mere physical absence of housing, but is often associated with disengagement linked to poverty, the absence of full and productive employment and decent work and the lack of access to infrastructure, as well as other socioeconomic problems, such as the loss of family, community and any sense of belonging.”
And it describes the situation of “a person or household deprived of safe habitable space, which may compromise their ability to have social relations”.
Read that last clause again. What the definition puts at the centre is not a roof, it is the loss of the ability to have social relations. That is not something that happens in one night.
The gradientThirteen steps, not two states
The typology UN-Habitat cites, ETHOS, also used by the OECD, does not divide the world into housed and homeless. It lists four groups and thirteen categories.
Look at group three. Staying at a friend's place. Renting without a lease. Having an eviction notice. Being afraid at home. Millions of people in those situations do not think of themselves as anywhere near homelessness, and they are already inside the reference typology.
The entry pointThe doorway: eviction
Among all the transitions in that gradient, one is documented and one is countable.
The resolution also names the shocks that push people over: armed conflict, natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies and pandemicsand it warns that climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of sudden and slow-onset disasters, “which will raise the risk of disaster-related homelessness”.
And it notes something that says a great deal about how the slide works: concerted efforts are needed to identify people who are homeless “either temporarily or chronically”. Two words that acknowledge the same situation can be a passage or a permanence.
The framingA societal flaw, not an individual one
The expert group convened by UN-Habitat and the UN put this in writing, and it is the sentence that quietly settles the argument:
Homelessness “should be viewed as a societal rather than an individual flaw”. It sits at the intersection of public health, housing, domestic violence, mental illness, substance misuse, climate change and natural disasters, urbanization, racial and gender discrimination and unemployment.
The definition it proposed, the one that informed the General Assembly resolution, calls homelessness “a manifestation of extreme poverty and a failure of multiple systems and human rights”.
Note the plural: multiple systems. Not one failure, a sequence of them. Which is another way of saying that between the first step and the pavement, several things had to give way, one after another.
The resolution also closes an escape route: homelessness is “a global problem, affecting people from diverse economic, social and cultural backgrounds, in developed as well as developing countries”.
The gapThe number nobody has
You will find figures for global homelessness everywhere. Before repeating any of them, read what the General Assembly itself says.
The UN says the count does not exist. Resolution 78/172 acknowledges “a lack of up-to-date data on the number of homeless people, the last study having been carried out in 2005” by UN-Habitat. That study estimated 100 million homeless people, 1.6 billion living in inadequate housing, and around 15 million evictions a year.
Those numbers are twenty years old, and we are not going to dress them up as current. The honest sentence is the uncomfortable one: we do not know how many people this concerns.
That absence is not a detail of statistics. The resolution itself notes that cumulative and disaggregated data are indispensable for effective policy. A population that is not counted is a population that is not planned for.
What followsWhat this changes for anyone who wants to help
- The moment to act is upstream, and it is visible. An eviction notice, a lease that does not exist, a sofa that has lasted three months: those are categories in the typology, not warning signs of a future problem.
- “How did they end up there” is the wrong question. The definition answers it already, in the plural: several systems failed, one after another. Asking it of a person asks them to account for institutions.
- A social protection floor is named as the tool. The resolution recalls that social protection floors can serve as a basis for tackling poverty, vulnerability and homelessness, and are therefore essential to ending the marginalisation of people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so.
There is one more line in the resolution worth carrying around. It states that being homeless “constitutes an affront to human dignity”. Not a misfortune, not a failure of character, an affront. The word places the shame on the situation, not on the person standing in it.
There is no worldwide helpline, and numbers change from one country to the next. Two markers hold everywhere.
If there is immediate danger, call your country’s emergency number.
Otherwise, Find A Helpline lists more than 1,700 free and confidential helplines in over 175 countries. You pick your country, it shows what exists near you, with opening hours. The site itself is in English, but the lines it points to are local.
This is not a clinical recommendation. It is the one international directory that states it verifies its data with the helpline organisations themselves and maintains it daily.
QuestionsFrequently asked questions
Is homelessness only sleeping rough?
No, and the UN says so plainly in resolution 78/172: homelessness “is not limited to the mere physical absence of housing”. It includes people living on the street or in buildings not meant for human habitation, people in temporary accommodation or shelters, and, depending on national law, people in severely inadequate housing without security of tenure or access to basic services.
Why talk about thirteen steps?
Because the European ETHOS typology, used by the OECD and cited by UN-Habitat, breaks homelessness and housing exclusion into thirteen categories in four groups: roofless, houseless, insecure, inadequate. Sleeping rough is the first category of the first line. It is the end of a path, not its beginning.
What already counts as a step?
Situations almost nobody associates with homelessness. Staying temporarily with family or friends. Occupying a home with no legal tenancy. Living under threat of eviction. Living under threat of violence. Living in a dwelling unfit for habitation, or in extreme overcrowding. All of them are in the ETHOS typology.
How many people are homeless worldwide?
We do not know, and it is the UN that says so. Resolution 78/172 acknowledges a lack of up-to-date data on the number of homeless people, “the last study having been carried out in 2005” by UN-Habitat. That study then estimated 100 million homeless people and 1.6 billion living in inadequate housing conditions. Those figures are twenty years old. We do not present them as current.
Is it a problem of poor countries?
No. The resolution states that homelessness is “a global problem, affecting people from diverse economic, social and cultural backgrounds, in developed as well as developing countries”. It is one of the rare passages where the General Assembly takes care to close an escape route.
Is it an individual choice?
The expert group convened by UN-Habitat and the UN answers that homelessness should be viewed as a societal rather than an individual flaw, and that it sits at the intersection of public health, housing, domestic violence, mental illness, substance misuse, climate change, urbanization, discrimination and unemployment. Its definition calls it “a manifestation of extreme poverty and a failure of multiple systems and human rights”.
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Sources
- United Nations General Assembly resolution A/RES/78/172 (2023)
- Definition of Homelessness, expert group annex, UN-Habitat (PDF)
About this article. General and educational information. The definitions and typologies quoted are international: the law where you live may use a narrower or broader definition, and it is that law which determines the rights and services a person can access. The only existing global figures date from 2005 and are presented as such. This text does not replace advice from a competent body.
Spotted an error or an out-of-date figure? Write to us: we will correct it and re-date the article. Our texts are written with the help of artificial intelligence and checked against official sources before publication, but a figure or a definition can change without us catching it. If anything here does not match what an official body tells you, they are right.