Homelessness within the UK is reaching crucial ranges, with greater than 380,000 individuals estimated to be with out a house in England alone as of late 2025.
There’s additionally a rising recognition that neurodivergent persons are over-represented amongst homeless populations. However a lot of this comes from anecdotal reviews from service suppliers or localised analysis initiatives particular neurodivergences like autism or consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction (ADHD).
So, our new analysis explored why this can be so. Our findings reveal how neurodivergent individuals might face exclusion at varied factors all through their social lives, training and employment. In flip, this may result in elevated monetary hardship and a better likelihood of homelessness.
As homelessness rises throughout the UK, public debate tends to concentrate on housing provide or private duty. For instance, housing and homelessness charity Shelter highlights the power scarcity of social housing and an more and more unaffordable non-public rented sector.
We spoke at size with six neurodivergent individuals, from one native authority space, who had skilled homelessness or insecure housing. To construction the interviews, we requested individuals to create a life map.
This can be a visible timeline of necessary occasions that had been significant to them, equivalent to training, employment, changing into homeless, looking for help and prognosis. We analysed the life maps and the participant accounts, figuring out three central themes throughout their tales.
First, ambiguity round prognosis usually confused issues and delayed or blocked entry to help. Second, individuals usually appeared to have fallen by means of the gaps at crucial factors throughout their lives, the place help ought to have been accessible. And third, as soon as in disaster, navigating providers was usually skilled as inaccessible, gradual and demoralising.
A lifetime of missed help
There have been numerous factors in our individuals’ lives the place help had been wanted however was in the end missed. This had knock-on results on their capability to stay in training or employment. In flip, this created a scarcity of alternatives and affected monetary safety.
For some individuals, these challenges started in class. Most described being bullied – an expertise that’s sadly widespread for a lot of neurodivergent youngsters. Confronted with a scarcity of help for the bullying, individuals took their very own motion, by altering colleges, shifting areas, and even leaving faculty altogether.
Those that went on to larger training skilled a scarcity of specialist neurodivergent help, alongside challenges with dwelling away from house for the primary time. Some turned to alcohol with a purpose to handle social anxiousness.
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Neurodivergent adults are recognized to expertise vital employment gaps. Our individuals additionally outlined quite a few challenges to securing and conserving a job. One described being unable to discover a placement for some work expertise required to finish a qualification. They believed that this was attributable to stigma related to their prognosis.
For others, jobs that could be thought-about entry-level, equivalent to customer support or retail jobs, introduced unanticipated difficulties, together with sensory overwhelm and social anxiousness. UK employers are required by regulation to make modifications to take away or cut back potential drawback confronted by disabled staff, that are referred to as “affordable changes”. However most individuals reported a scarcity of those in follow.
When our individuals hit a disaster level and sought assist for his or her housing wants, many skilled the providers as complicated or unsupportive of their wants. Most described lengthy waits for varied helps and providers, usually in unsuitable, non permanent lodging.
Sensory and social challenges in these environments contributed to psychological well being deterioration. Lengthy ready lists to entry remedy or diagnostic assessments additionally left individuals feeling trapped and unable to maneuver ahead with their lives.
‘Society doesn’t care about you’
Respondents described patterns of persistent exclusion, beginning in youth, that had paved the way in which to homelessness. As soon as in want of housing help, they discovered vital obstacles to accessing providers that had been designed by and for neurotypical individuals.
When supplied non permanent lodging, in lots of instances this didn’t meet their neurodivergent wants. For instance, most individuals described being positioned in busy, “chaotic” hostels that they had been determined to go away. In a single case, an individual with vital sensory sensitivities was dwelling in shared non permanent lodging next-door to a nightclub which performed loud music all through the night time, affecting their sleep.
We additionally seen that individuals appeared to have internalised these experiences. For instance, they blamed themselves and felt like “society doesn’t care about you”, as one described. This affected each their shallowness and their engagement with providers.
Many individuals might face comparable circumstances but don’t essentially discover themselves homeless. For our individuals, nonetheless, hardship was heightened by diminished social networks to fall again on throughout exhausting occasions. They described difficulties in sustaining common contact with associates. They had been generally rejected by their household and others, attributable to a lack of know-how of their variations.
The tales we heard had been highly effective and hard-hitting. They present the intense results of exclusion which can construct up over an individual’s life.
There have been additionally many factors at which early help or prevention might have been put into place, for instance, in training, workplaces and when accessing well being and social care. There are actually a rising variety of toolkits and steerage for providers working with neurodivergent individuals going through homelessness.
Taken collectively, our findings present how neurodivergent individuals might face distinctive pathways into homelessness. It demonstrates why earlier, extra joined-up inclusion and help is important for prevention.
