Exeter’s homeless death rate in 2024 was the highest among all the English cities featured in this year’s Museum of Homelessness Dying Homeless Project report after rising nearly threefold since the previous year.
The campaigning charity, which publishes its research into the deaths of people experiencing homelessness across the UK each October, found that 21 people died while homeless in Exeter in 2024. It recorded eight such deaths in the city in 2023 and 2022.
Exeter’s 2024 homeless death rate, at 15.17 per 100,000 population, was the highest among the ten English cities featured in the report. It was more than four times the rate in London and six and a half times the rate across the whole UK.
Belfast was the only UK city in which more people per 100,000 – 15.89 – died while homeless in 2024.
Exeter is the smallest city featured in the report.
Homeless deaths per 100,000 population in 2024. Source: Museum of Homelessness.
The Museum of Homelessness was founded and is run by people with direct experience of homelessness. It took over the Dying Homeless Project in 2019 from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which began the project in October 2017.
It defines homelessness as sleeping rough, living in emergency and temporary accommodation, living in short-term supported housing, sofa surfing or squatting.
The project uses information it collects from grassroots groups, homelessness sector workers, bereaved family members and media reports, cross-referencing it with data obtained via freedom of information requests sent to every UK local authority with responsibility for homelessness.
It also uses data from the Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency to record the population size of the local authority areas, regions and countries included in its findings.
It found that 1,611 people died while homeless across the UK in 2024 – an average of four such deaths every day.
Dying Homeless Project 2024 report. Source: Museum of Homelessness.
In order to understand the dramatic increase in Exeter deaths, the Dying Homeless Project team visited the city in August this year.
The team spoke to local homelessness organisations which said that Exeter faces an acute shortage of affordable housing – like much of the UK – but has some of the highest eviction rates in the country, including amongst providers of temporary and supported accommodation.
They also said that the situation is worsened by lack of long-term funding and a shortage of space in which to provide drop-in and crisis support, especially during evenings and weekends, when incidents of harm are more likely. They added: “People all too often have nowhere to go.”
The team found that people were living with “revolving door” homelessness, moving in and out of accommodation and only in sporadic contact with the support they need. Of the 21 people who died homeless in Exeter last year, fifteen were staying in temporary or supported accommodation.
It nevertheless pointed at positive changes in Exeter homelessness service delivery resulting from efforts made by local organisations to work more effectively in partnership.
It also cited Exeter homelessness charity St Petrock’s finding that between 24 and 35 people slept on Exeter’s streets each night last year despite an official count conducted by Exeter City Council overnight on 11-12 November 2024 which recorded eleven people sleeping rough in the city.
St Petrock’s says the council count “consistently underestimates” the true levels of rough sleeping in the city and is calling on the council to change its approach.
A rough sleeper outside Exeter Guildhall
The 2024 Dying Homeless Project report was published during Exeter City Council’s annual homeless awareness week, this year held from 6 October. It published three related news stories on its website on 7 and 8 October, including one promoting a podcast.
In the month since then it has published another 50 news stories on its website.
It has promoted its lottery three times, celebrated Exeter’s gold medal win in this year’s South West in Bloom competition – one of 38 golds handed out – and talked up a Guildhall Shopping Centre award, one of 28 given by the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management this year.
Both awards were announced during homeless awareness week. A fortnight later council leader Phil Bialyk’s column celebrated both again.
But neither his column nor any of the council’s other news stories mentioned the Museum of Homelessness report, published on 8 October, nor the Exeter homeless deaths it recorded.
The Museum of Homelessness memorial to the 21 people who died while homeless in Exeter in 2024. Source: Dying Homeless Project.
The Dying Homeless Project hosts a memorial web page which remembers the 8,521 people who have died while homeless recorded by the project in the eight years since it began.
72 of them died in Exeter, including the 21 people who died during 2024, two of whose names the project was unable to find out.
St Petrock’s also leads an annual memorial service to remember all those who died while homeless during the previous year.
