Hampshire homeless charities facing "significant" impacts as youth homelessness rises
New research shows 12,890 young people faced homelessness in the South West between 2024 and 25
Last updated 25th Feb 2026
Hampshire homeless charities say they're facing "significant" impacts as youth homelessness rises across the South Coast.
New research shows 12,890 young people faced homelessness in the South West between 2024 and 25, up 5% on the previous year.
Kelly Headen, Head of Services at Step by Step charity, told us what they're seeing locally.
She said: "We're seeing more and more year on year that we're finding we're increasing the amount of young people that we're needing to support.
"A lot of the complexities around homelessness where we're having to kind of interject and try and reduce risks or try and support people to be able to sustain tenancies.
"Maybe even to be able to have the opportunity to get tenancies in the first place because actually that's often happening, as well as the mental health challenges that we're seeing more and more."
The number of young people facing homelessness across the UK rose by almost 7,000 in a year, according to research by a charity who are warning of teens sleeping on night buses and strangers' sofas.
The 6% rise marks the third year in a row that youth homelessness has increased in the UK, according to charity Centrepoint.
It found there were 123,934 young people - aged 16-24 - facing homelessness between April 2024 and March 2025.
That is up from 116,947 in the previous 12 months.
Ms Headen told us why we might be seeing an increase.
She said: "I think families are struggling to sustain teenagers particularly.
"We work primarily with 11 to 25 year old and it's really difficult.
"The schools are pressured, they've got challenges that they can't necessarily contain and have the resources.
"It sort of has a domino effect and you end up having everyone just trying their best, but it's not quite good enough.
"Then we end up with this sort of cycle where families are just at a breaking point and they're not able to help and keep the young person.
"It's a breakdown and that's definitely a common thread."
Centrepoint's annual databank is made up of publicly available data and responses to Freedom of Information requests to national governments and local authorities.
Youth homelessness rose across each of the four nations except for Northern Ireland, where the figure fell slightly from 2,896 to 2,889.
Wales had the largest percentage increase of 8%, from 5,433 to 5,856, while England had a 6% rise from 101,184 to 107,585 and Scotland rose 2% year-on-year, from 7,434 to 7,604.