These include isolated people with mental health or drug problems, current and ex offenders, former rough sleepers now in their own homes and people who are begging or street drinking.
Our 2014 statistics* on health reveal that:
Our complex needs housing accommodates people whose particular vulnerabilities means that they are at risk of sleeping rough. Through our street work and hostels, we have become experts at working with, and supportively housing, people with very complex problems - for example, people with severe mental health problems, a lifelong alcohol addiction, very challenging behaviour, or a combination of these and other issues. It has been a natural next step to run high support accommodation for people with particularly complex needs, to ensure they do not become homeless again, or better still to house them before they're ever forced to sleep rough.
In Camden, for example, we manage the North Area and South Area Mental Health Supported Accommodation in the borough, providing support to 96 men and women. Staff also work with these clients to enable them to make choices about additional, personalised, help they might want to 'buy' to assist in their recovery.
Read our most recent report on the causes of rough sleeping from 2013, No More: Homelessness through the eyes of recent rough sleepers.
Find out more details on how we help homeless people through our complex needs housing.
Find out more details on how our complex needs housing helps homeless people with their recovery.
*statistics taken from St Mungo's Client Needs Survey 2013, prior to St Mungo's and Broadway merging