Adult Social Care Glossary, v 0.6

The legal definition of homelessness is that a household has no home in the UK or anywhere else in the world available and reasonable to occupy. Homelessness does not just refer to people who are sleeping rough, and is not just a problem found in high-value housing markets such as London and the South East. The following housing circumstances are examples of homelessness: - rooflessness (without a shelter of any kind, sleeping rough) - houselessness (with a place to sleep but temporary, in institutions or a shelter) - living in insecure housing (threatened with severe exclusion due to insecure tenancies, eviction, domestic violence, or staying with family and friends known as 'sofa surfing') - living in inadequate housing (in caravans on illegal campsites, in unfit housing, in extreme overcrowding)