In a new Data Insight, Dr Ian Thomas from the ADR Wales Housing and Homelessness research team conducts a ‘deep dive’ into homelessness using the Substance Misuse Data Set (SMDS), finding that roughly one in four people accessing support for substance misuse also experienced homelessness.
In the Data Insight, Ian explores the potential ways the dataset could be used to generate evidence related to the experience of homelessness as it intersects with substance misuse. The analysis also looks at the wider extent of ‘severe and multiple disadvantage’ in the SMDS, which is the co-occurrence of homelessness, with other forms of disadvantage—such as mental health issues and criminal justice system involvement.
Other key findings from the Data Insight include:
- Gender and ethnicity differences between people who had and had not experienced homelessness were minimal.
- People who had experienced homelessness were more likely to have reported mental health issues when accessing support, and that drug use was their main problematic substance.
- Roughly one in five people who had accessed substance misuse treatment in Wales also reported homelessness and mental health issues.
- Referrals of people experiencing homelessness into substance misuse services were disproportionately from prison / transitional support schemes when leaving the prison system.
Ian Thomas, author of the study and ADR Wales Research Fellow, said, “This analysis evidences the overlap between homelessness and other forms of severe disadvantage, reinforcing the need for coordinated, cross-sector support. Generating such insights is hampered in Wales by limited sources of information specifically related to homelessness. Making better use of existing public services data, like the SMDS, is therefore vital to support evidence based decision-making. Starting in 2026/27, Welsh Government will undertake a case-level national data collection on people supported by local authority homeless teams. This collection offers promising new avenues for data driven policy and practice in this field. However, people experiencing homelessness lead complex lives, and not all will approach local authority homeless services. By linking datasets like the SMDS with the new data collection, we can begin to build a more holistic understanding of people’s experience of homelessness in Wales.”