Climate change is making homelessness more dangerous, exposing people without a safe home to heatwaves, extreme temperatures and health risks that safer housing protects against.
As climate change brings more frequent and intense heatwaves, people experiencing homelessness are among those most exposed to the effects of the climate crisis. Many of us can retreat indoors, close the curtains, turn on a fan or air conditioning, drink cold water, or simply change our plans for the day. For people without a safe home, none of these choices are guaranteed.
A safe home is one of the most important protections anyone can have from extreme weather. But for people experiencing homelessness, staying safe during periods of extreme heat can be a daily, sometimes life-threatening, challenge.
For people sleeping rough, extreme heat can be genuinely dangerous. Without a safe place to cool down and escape rising temperatures, people can be exposed to high levels of heat for long periods, often with limited access to shade, drinking water, or other ways to stay cool. That combination, heat, dehydration, nowhere to retreat, is how a hot week turns into a medical emergency. Research elsewhere backs this up starkly: one US study found that people experiencing homelessness are 26 times more likely to be hospitalised for heat-related illness than the general population, a scale of risk that UK services are increasingly having to plan for too.
UK heatwaves are no longer a once-in-a-decade emergency. The UK is currently experiencing its fourth heatwave this summer. Emergency measures like Severe Weather Emergency Protocols (SWEP) are currently used as a response, but if extreme heat is now a predictable, recurring part of a UK summer, it can’t be treated as a one-off crisis every time. It needs a longer-term, systematic response: safe indoor spaces, heatwave planning and stronger links with health services built in as standard, not scrambled together each time a heatwave hits.
But homelessness is not only visible on the streets. Many more people experiencing homelessness are living in temporary accommodation – hostels, hotels, B&Bs or converted blocks – much of it overcrowded or poor quality, where staying cool and safe during periods of extreme heat can be just as hard.
During a recent heatwave, around 60 families living in temporary accommodation in a converted tower block in south London had their air conditioning switched off by the building’s management, who said cooling wasn’t included as an amenity. One mother described her one-year-old as “soaked” after falling asleep in the heat, while her 12-year-old suffered repeated nosebleeds over several days. Three children from the block ended up in hospital. Little ventilation, windows that couldn’t properly open, exactly the conditions that turn a heatwave from uncomfortable into hazardous.
A lack of suitable housing leaves people more exposed to rising temperatures, with limited ventilation, little space to escape the heat, and few options for managing extreme weather. For someone already living with the uncertainty and stress of homelessness, these conditions make the effects of climate change even harder to cope with.
A safe home is more than a roof over someone’s head. It provides security, stability and protection, and it’s one of the most powerful health interventions we have. People experiencing homelessness face worse health outcomes and shorter life expectancy than the general population, and unsafe housing widens that gap further: it increases exposure to illness, worsens existing health conditions, and makes it harder to access healthcare in the first place.
Stable housing does the opposite. It improves mental and physical health, reduces exposure to infectious disease, and gives people the ground to stand on while they rebuild their lives. At Depaul UK, we believe homelessness is solvable, but it now needs to be treated as the predictable, climate-linked risk it has become, not an afterthought when the temperature spikes.
That’s a case Depaul is making beyond our own services too. Our international arm, Depaul International, is pushing for homelessness to be recognised as a climate issue on the global stage. Work that reflects the same argument we’re making here at home: safe housing isn’t an ‘amenity’, it’s protection. Through its work with the Institute of Global Homelessness, Depaul International has helped secure three UN resolutions on homelessness and is now pushing for homelessness to be built into international climate and development funding, which currently overlooks it almost entirely.
Whether it’s someone sleeping rough through a heatwave, a tower block in south London with the air conditioning switched off, or a policy gap in global climate funding, the principle is the same: people without a safe home are left to face extreme temperatures unprotected.
Everyone deserves more than just shelter. Everyone deserves a safe place to call home.