This year, 320,000 people were recorded as homeless in Britain, analysis from housing charity Shelter suggests. It is a rise of 13,000, or 4%, on last year's figures and equivalent to 36 new people becoming homeless every day.
London has the highest rate of homelessness, but it is growing fastest in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, and north-west England, the analysis says.
The government says it is investing £1.2bn to tackle homelessness. The report, which is published as temperatures start to plummet, says the real level of homelessness is notoriously difficult to measure.
Only individuals in contact with local authorities or in hostels are included in the official figures.
Shelter analysts arrived at the total of 320,000 after collating official figures for those living in temporary accommodation, sleeping rough and the number of hostel places taken up, reducing them to compensate for potential double-counting.
The charity says its figures are likely to be a conservative estimate, as they do not include people unknown to the authorities or experiencing other types of homelessness not included in the figures.
They add that rough sleeping figures are particularly difficult to record because many people hide and remain out of sight for safety reasons and are not seen by the council officials who carry out the counts.
So, those who bed down for the night in derelict buildings rather than the more obvious shop doorways are often missed out of the tally.
But the figures show that since Shelter first carried out this kind of analysis in 2016, an extra 25,000 people have become homeless.
They also mean one in every 200 Britons is either sleeping rough or living in temporary accommodation, such as hostels and B&Bs.
