From Helsinki to Los Angeles, homelessness is rising despite record public spending. Governments pour billions into emergency responses that stabilise lives in the short term but fix little in the long run. In England, local authorities spend £2.8bn each year on temporary accommodation for households who face homelessness, up from £1.7bn two years ago. Across the OECD, it’s the same: costs rise, outcomes stagnate. Few areas of public spending could yield greater returns if invested differently.

Finland, long held up as the global exemplar, saw homelessness increase last year for the first time in over a decade. It is a reminder that the best-designed systems remain vulnerable to housing shortages, migration pressures and rising costs unless investment in what works is sustained.

We do not lack empathy. We lack a system designed to prevent homelessness, not just respond to it. We have elaborate research and development (R&D) systems for science, technology and defence, but almost none for social policy. In homelessness that gap is painfully visible. Public health offers a lesson: when legislation, practice and culture are informed by evidence and driven by sustained R&D, prevention becomes as powerful as cure, cutting smoking rates in the UK from around half the adult population in the 1970s to under 15 per cent today. We need the same disciplined, evidence-led approach to prevent homelessness.

Our latest research at the Centre for Homelessness Impact, on families living in temporary accommodation, reveals the human cost of neglecting prevention. There are 172,420 children in England growing up in temporary accommodation, up more than 20 per cent in two years according to latest government data. At least 80 children in England died in such housing over recent years, many in overcrowded or unsafe conditions. Families can spend months, even years, in a single room without a kitchen or space for children to study or play.

These conditions do not just trap families in the present; they shape the future. In the UK the majority of those affected are single mothers. Children who spend early years in temporary housing face higher health risks and lower educational attainment. Without opportunities for stability, learning and employment, the next generation is set up to repeat the same cycle.

To turn the ship of this crisis, we must pair households, no matter how temporary, with opportunities for growth such as tutoring for children, parenting support and pathways into work. Such help is rarely offered systematically to families in temporary accommodation and where it does exist, it is often short term, generic and unevaluated. Without testing and evidence to guide investment, promising practice remains the exception, not the norm.

England’s forthcoming homelessness strategy will show whether ministers are ready to treat prevention as an investment rather than a cost, a shift that would set an important precedent for how prevention is built into social policy. Turning that precedent into practice will require sustained political leadership and delivery discipline.

Such a shift is not only ethical; it is economic and increasingly unavoidable. Even part of £100m recently earmarked in the Spending Review for homelessness prevention could seed this effort if used to test, learn and scale what works, turning short-term funding into long-term savings. While reforms to social security and housing benefit are vital, they are not, on their own, a prevention strategy. Without an R&D engine to test and scale what works locally, governments risk spending more only to achieve temporary relief.

R&D is how we get unstuck: how we move from firefighting to foresight, from managing homelessness to preventing it. A home should be a platform for opportunity, not the end of ambition. With the right infrastructure, political resolve and culture of learning, prevention can finally become visible, measurable and sustainable.

Lígia Teixeira is CEO of the Centre for Homelessness Impact

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