Jersey Homelessness figures (FOI)

Request

Can you provide the most recent figures for homelessness in Jersey:

A

How many people are living on the streets in Jersey?

B

How many people are living in homeless shelters in Jersey?

C

What is being done to support them?

D

How do these figures compare to the same time last year? Can you provide a breakdown for the last five years.

Response

A, B and D

The requested information for (a), (b) and (d) is not held. Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) law 2011 applies.

C

The Minister for Housing and communities has recently published a working definition for Government and external agencies to utilise:

Homelessness Definition Framework (gov.je)

2. Definition 

2.1. Internationally, the definition of homelessness varies between jurisdictions. ETHOS, designed by FEANTSA – the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless – provides a common “language” for homelessness and is used for different purposes such as a framework for debate, for data collection and for policy and monitoring purposes. ETHOS attempts to cover all living situations that amount to homelessness: 

- Rooflessness – without a shelter of any kind, sleeping rough. 

- Houselessness – with a place to sleep but temporarily in institutions or shelters. 

- Living in insecure housing – threatened with exclusion because of insecure tenancies, eviction, or domestic violence. 

- Living in inadequate housing – in caravans or illegal campsites, in unfit housing or in extreme overcrowding.

Customer and Local Services, along with external stakeholders are now starting to use this definition to build the data, to answer other questions raised in future.  At present, this work is still underway.

The Housing Advise Service are developing links with all Government departments and external agencies to develop, and deliver, targeted support to those who fall within the homelessness definition.

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.