Well, the government helpfully guides us with this in the Housing Act, and Homelessness Act. These acts are law and tell us what the definition of homeless is.
Not to drag it out for too long or make it more complicated than it needs to be. As far as the law is concerned, someone is homeless if they don't have "security of tenure." Basicly this means if you have a tenancy agreement with a housing authority, housing association or a landlord you have security of tenure so thus have a home.
A tenancy agreement gives you certain rights - security - under the law so you can't just be told you have to leave your home.
So according to the law and the government if you don't have a tenancy you are homeless, its that simple. - Of course this doesn't apply if you own your own home.- When we see someone sleeping on the streets we should think of these people as being "street homeless". The current estimated amount of street homeless people in the UK is around 3000 on any given night. But just this week one agency stated that under the legal definition of homeless - remembering this means being able to be put out on the streets with no notice or time to arrange other accommodation - there are 100,000 homeless children in the UK.
Taking the above into account the real number of homeless in the UK will be around the million mark.
This is so hard to even comprehend in 2015. The government talks about building more affordable homes for people to buy when under their definition a million people don't even have a home of any type.
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