The Centre for Homelessness Impact (CHI) and the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition, chaired by English Rural, have partnered to create a collection of free, non-stigmatising images of people who are experiencing homelessness in rural areas to help challenge negative stereotypes.

When we think of homelessness, we often think of images of people in cities or urban areas. But that’s largely because rural homelessness can remain hidden, and those experiencing homelessness, isolated. From woodland camps to sofa surfing - rural homelessness can take many forms. We spoke with people who had experienced homelessness in different locations and different forms, from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire to Shaftesbury to South Devon. People spoke of the challenges of rural homelessness, from inefficient transport links, to a lack of social housing. 

The unique experiences reflected in this new collection show the real human faces of homelessness, helping to change the narrative and build empathy.

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Rory Weal, Strategic Policy lead at English Rural, and Co-Chair of the Rural Homelessness Counts, coalition said:

"Often our perceptions of homelessness are based less on evidence, than on images and stories. These perceptions lead us to associate homelessness just with cities. But we know far too many people in rural communities are facing the injustice of having no place to call home.

That's why we have been pleased to work on this collection, to demonstrate through images and stories that homelessness can happen anywhere. Homelessness is everyone's business, and tackling it requires action across all of our communities."

Greg Hurst, Director of Communications and Public Engagement at CHI, said of the reasons to create this new collection:

“Homelessness in rural areas has a very distinct profile. For individuals and families at risk of or impacted by homelessness, the experience can be very different from that in larger towns or cities. Often rural homelessness is hidden from sight. This is the reason that we have added a collection of photographs of people going through homelessness in rural areas to our free library of images of homelessness.”

The images add to CHI’s free library of non-stigmatising images which we launched in 2023 to show realistic images but also those that are evidence-based. The images are available to download directly from our online portal.  

Thank you to the Ferry Project in Fenland, Shelter Dorset, and Turning Tides in West Sussex for supporting this work.

You can view and download all the images for free on Resource Space and read about the shoot in this blog by CHI’s Director of Communications and Public Engagement, Greg Hurst.