Prince William's Homewards programme uses AI and big data to tackle homelessness before it happens

Prince William's Homewards programme wants to use big data and AI to stop homelessness before it happens

Homewards teams up with Salesforce and others to tackle homelessness * Prince William-backed Homewards programme looks to use AI to boost chairty efforts * Homewards is working with partners such as Salesforce to utilize AI agents and workflows * Salesforce will be providing AI agent services to help free up time and capacity A homelessness programme backed by Prince William has revealed new plans to try and tackle the issue with data and technology. Homewards is teaming up with Salesforce to launch its new Homelessness Data Lab, which will unite over 25 organisations across business, government, and frontline services. The programme was revealed by the Prince at London Tech Week 2026, as he took to the keynote stage for its official launch, joined by leaders from Salesforce, NatWest and Bloomberg. Using AI to tackle homelessness "It's about building a model that shows homelessness is preventable," Prince William said at the launch, "the earlier you deal with the problem, the better." Founded in 2023, Homewards has big aims when it comes to eliminating homelessnes, attempting to spot the signs suggesting people may be in difficulty before the damage happens. Homewards says 430,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness in the UK, which is enough to fill Wembley Stadium more than four times over. But it has high hopes for the Homelessness Data Lab, which Salesforce UK&I CEO Zahra Bahrololoumi explained can help improve collaboration across a whole host of industries and sectors. "It's such an important project,...there's no one single cause, it can happen for a multitude of reasons," she noted, "if we can make it predictable, we can prevent it...there's such a rich set of data." Bahrololoumi outlined the need to better support staff to detect risk of homelessness, as Salesforce will be deploying autonomous AI agents with the Homeless Link service to handle the burden of administrative workflows, freeing up frontline workers to really connect face-to-face with those who may be struggling. "We're really proud to be using AI in that way, to release human capacity and enable these frontline workers," Bahrololoumi noted. "We can only win from that...AI will help us identify the interventions that will actually work." Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Prince William to highlight how technology could help prevent homelessness

Prince William will tell London Tech Week today that homelessness rarely happens without warning - and that technology could help to solve the issue. In comments shared with Sky News ahead of the event, the Prince is expected to lay out how data, technology and businesses could spot the warning signs of homelessness early and prevent homelessness before it occurs. Homewards, the prince's homelessness programme, is launching the Homelessness Data Lab, which will employ techniques currently used by businesses to "ethically and responsibly" identify people at risk of homelessness at its earliest stages, when support can have the greatest impact. Prince William is expected to highlight how technology can be harnessed as a force for good with the potential to help to prevent homelessness not just in the UK, but globally. The project will be partnered with Salesforce and the UK property charity LandAid. It will work alongside other major businesses like Accenture, VodafoneThree, Bloomberg and NatWest to see how techniques used in their businesses could help to end homelessness. See more from London Tech Week: 'I've never been bullied in my life,' says tech secretary - as she vows not to bow to pressure from Trump More than 430,000 people face homelessness in the UK but it is "rarely random", according to Zahra Bahrololoumi, chief executive of Salesforce UK and Ireland. "It can be predictable, which means with the right tools and support, it can be preventable," she said. "By bringing together more than 25 organisations across the private, public, and non-profit sectors, the Data Lab allows us to put data and technology to work safely and ethically where it is needed most." Dan Hughes, a trustee at LandAid, said the property industry has a "real role to play in tackling youth homelessness". "This collaboration is a brilliant example of what's possible when businesses, government and the sector come together around shared data and a shared goal. "By using data to identify warning signs earlier, we can move from responding to crisis to preventing it, and that shift is exactly what LandAid exists to support." More science and technology news: Four-man crew named for NASA's next mission in Artemis moon programme How satellites and AI are watching the world AI to be used in crown courts to reduce time victims have to wait Today marks the first time homelessness has been on the agenda at London Tech Week, one of the country's biggest tech events. The Queen is also expected to visit a St Mungo's accommodation site today. The charity supports those experiencing homelessness. Queen Camilla will meet residents and staff connected to a reading programme enabled by The Queen's Reading Room.

As King Charles Warns of AI Risks, Prince William Embraces It to Solve a National Crisis

Prince William want to combat homelessness in the U.K. His solution? Artificial intelligence. The prince's homelessness program, Homewards, will be launching a Homelessness Data Lab to "ethically and responsibly" identify people at risk of homelessness in early stages. The new project will be a collaborative effort with Salesforce and LandAid, a U.K.-based charity. During a recent appearance at London Tech Week, William emphasized the importance of ending potential homelessness. "The earlier you deal with a problem, the better, as we all know in life. There's no one problem that fixes homelessness. It's multifaceted," he said. "Many of your customers, your clients, will be using data through banking apps, through their phones. I'm not sure you realize how much that data can be used to predict and see problems with potential homelessness before they actually arise." The new initiative will work alongside other major businesses like Accenture, VodafoneThree, and NatWest. Per a report from Reuters, the early intervention program will analyze data and flag warning signs, such as a missed bill payment, a phone being cut off, or a child absent from school. "Prevention is better than cure," William said.

Prince William says UK homelessness 'preventable' with AI

Prince William announced at London Tech Week that AI technology can prevent homelessness in the UK. His charity, Homewards, launched a data lab to identify early warning signs of people losing their homes. This initiative aims to use personal data to keep individuals and families housed. Tech leaders believe AI will pinpoint effective interventions, reducing administrative burdens on frontline workers. Homelessness in the UK is "entirely preventable" thanks to AI-supported technology, Prince William told the London Tech Week conference on Wednesday. The heir to the British throne spoke as his homeless charity, Homewards, launched the Homelessness Data Lab -- a national collaboration it said can improve how data and technology flag "clear warning signs long before" someone loses their home. This could involve the sharing of personal data on an individual's finances, welfare benefits and health between different bodies, prompting some cautionary comments elsewhere at London Tech Week surrounding data privacy. "Homelessness is not inevitable, it is entirely preventable, it is predictable," William said during a panel discussion. The prince said "data and the technology" can be used "to keep people in their homes, their jobs, their communities, families, at school". "In life, prevention is better than the cure," the royal told a packed conference hall. Homewards notes that there are more than 430,000 people in the UK experiencing homelessness, half of whom are children. Data privacy Dan Hughes, a trustee of the property sector charity LandAid that is partnering with Homewards to deliver the data lab, cautioned that data privacy needed to be respected while seeking to tackle homelessness with the help of tech. "We can throw huge amounts of data at solving this, but a lot of it is about individuals and people," he told a separate London Tech Week event Wednesday. "We need to make sure that we take best practice on personal data and how we can leverage that information without risking privacy." Zahra Bahrololoumi, chief executive of Salesforce UK and Ireland, a tech company also involved with the data lab, said "AI will help... identify the interventions that will actually work" in preventing homelessness. "Our mission is to reduce the administrative burden on frontline workers," she said sat alongside William. "We are applying AI tooling... (that) will enable the frontline worker to focus on the individuals and families that need the support the most," she added.

UK's Prince William says AI can help to tackle homelessness

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Britain's Prince William said artificial intelligence was being harnessed to identify people at risk of homelessness, enabling early intervention to keep them in housing or reduce the time they spend on the streets or in temporary accommodation. The prince told an audience at London Tech Week that it was an "unusual conversation" for a technology forum, but the types of data companies handled daily could give insights that made a real difference. "I'm not sure you realise how much that data can be used to predict and see problems with potential homelessness before they arise," he said. Homelessness has long been an important cause for the prince, and three years ago he set up the "Homewards" project with the aim of making the problem "rare, brief and unrepeated". The programme launched its Homelessness Data Lab at Tech Week in partnership with LandAid and Salesforce, supported by Bloomberg, VodafoneThree, Accenture, NatWest Group and others. The lab will analyse data to flag warning signs - such as a missed bill payment, a phone being cut off or a child absent from school - to intervene to reduce homelessness, a problem Homewards said affected more than 430,000 people in Britain. The prince said the data could help identify much earlier when somebody was getting into difficulties, allowing intervention that could help them stay in their homes, jobs and communities. "Prevention is better than cure," he said, appealing to other companies and organisations to join the 25 already working with the lab. William was shown an "Economic Wellbeing Explorer" map that uses anonymised data from NatWest to pinpoint homelessness risks in Lambeth, London, one of the six locations Homewards works in. "It's game-changing stuff," he told Tim Siret, an analyst at Smart Data Foundry, a subsidiary of the University of Edinburgh, which created the explorer. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by William James)