Statistics on Beds for Homeless within Shelters and Measures to Support Transition into Long-term Residences

14 Dr Choo Pei Ling asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) how many beds for the homeless are in shelters run by (i) the Government and (ii) charitable organisations, respectively; (b) what are the measures to move them to longer-term residences; and (c) what is the success rate of such transition measures particularly for homeless youths and young adults under the age of 35.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social and Family Development (Mr Eric Chua) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): Mr Speaker, there are currently seven Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF)-funded Transitional Shelters and 20 Safe Sound Sleeping Places (S3Ps) run by charitable organisations or volunteer groups. The total bed spaces are 730 and 160 respectively.

Transitional Shelters provide onsite social work intervention to residents to help them address underlying issues and work towards stable long-term accommodation options. They also link the residents to community partners and volunteers to provide social support, so that their transition to long-term housing is stable and sustainable.

Youths and young adults aged 35 years may exit the different types of stable long-term accommodation. Some reconcile with their families, while others move to open market rental, or to the Housing and Development Board (HDB) Public Rental Scheme. Based on data in recent years, the average length of stay for youths and young adults in Transitional Shelters was seven months, compared to 10 months for individuals in Transitional Shelters.

I will also invite the Member to refer to the 2025 MSF Street Count report, published recently on 9 January 2026 for more details on how the Government provides support for rough sleepers and the homeless to attain long-term housing stability. MSF will also continue to monitor the situation and address any emerging trends.

Mr Speaker: Dr Choo.

Dr Choo Pei Ling (Chua Chu Kang): Thank you, Speaker. I have three supplementary questions. The first one, does the Ministry have dedicated outreach teams to proactively check on rough sleepers and follow up on reports from the public, so that timely assistance can be extended to the homeless? Question two, how does the Ministry assess whether there is sufficient shelter bed capacity and what mechanisms are in place to allow expansion when needed? The last question, what measures are in place to ensure that homeless individuals, particularly youth and young adults, are supported not only with housing, but also with employment opportunities, skills training and mental health services to sustain long-term stability?

Mr Eric Chua: Sir, I thank the Member for her supplementary questions. On the first question, our Social Service Office (SSO) officers do accompany our Partners Engaging and Empowering Rough Sleepers (PEERS) Network community partners on a weekly basis, whenever they conduct the night walks. So, whenever we have night walks, and I join them from time to time in a year, we have SSO officers, often times, HDB officers will also be available on WhatsApp, so that we can provide help to our rough sleeping friends on the streets as readily as we can. So, the answer is yes, we do have teams that are supporting our community partners, on the ground, on a sustained basis.

With regards to capacity and utilisation rates, it is a good practice that we have kept from pandemic days, where we work very closely with our community partners to make sure that there is sufficient surge capacity, should there be a need to exercise them.

With regards to youths and young adults who are in the rough sleeping situation, I think it is a quite a different ball game altogether. The joint Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), as well as MSF's homelessness and rough sleeping study that has been published, and I mentioned in my main reply earlier, we have seen some of the trends, and I think it bears repeating some of the observations.

For instance, the first misconception is that there has been a huge rise in youth homelessness. If you compare numbers, in 2022, where we did our last street count of the 530 rough sleepers that we have observed then, there were about 16 rough sleepers on the streets. Last year, where we did our nationwide street count again in 2025, of the 496 rough sleepers, we had about 30. This represented an increase, in terms of percentage, from 3% then in 2022, to 6%.

Absolute numbers wise, it is not a big increase, but I think if you just look at this statistic, it does not give the situation sufficient justice, because we do need to unpack the nuances. Because rough sleeping on the streets present itself as just one option of several, whenever a youth at-risk faces circumstances like academic stress, family disputes or even relationship issues in their life, and resort to running away from home, to sleeping rough on the streets. And another phenomenon that we have observed is that couch surfing is often times also an option.

So, we do need to unpack this in a more nuanced manner with our youth agencies on the ground. MSF will do that, and in time to come, we can share more with the Member, or with this Chamber, when the time arises. But I think we do not want to detract from the main substance of the rough sleeping and homelessness issue in Singapore, and that is the fact that the predominant profile of the rough sleeper in Singapore is still male, middle-aged to older Chinese individuals, and often times, they still remain in employment. In fact, about a good majority of them remain in employment, and many of them, not all rough sleepers are homeless. Half of them do have homes to go back to, so I think this is a call to action from me to everyone, Members of the Chamber, as well as to all out there – if you see a rough sleeper in your neighbourhood, please contact the SSO or the MSF PEERS office.

"More Care, Less Stare". Our rough sleeping friends are going through a rough patch in their life. I think it takes the whole of Singapore to care for these some 500 individuals of them on our streets.