Fundraising sleepouts may raise awareness, but homelessness is fundamentally a systems failure driven by housing shortages, inadequate support services and political inaction.

I understand why events like CEO sleepouts exist. They raise money, generate media coverage, and bring homelessness into public conversation in ways that might not otherwise happen. Many participants are genuinely motivated, and some go on to become effective advocates for housing and homelessness reform.

But I have become increasingly uncomfortable with these campaigns; not because homelessness deserves less attention, but because I think we owe the issue far greater honesty. Honesty about what actually ends homelessness. Honesty about what counts as symbolism. And honesty about how certain awareness campaigns can quietly distort public understanding of the very problem they claim to address.

Sleeping outside for one night is not homelessness. It is a controlled simulation of discomfort. Participants know exactly when the event ends. They know they are returning home the next morning. They retain their income, their professional networks, their healthcare, their identity documents, their safety, and their housing security. The cold is temporary; the experience is bounded.

Real homelessness is not primarily about one difficult night. It is about chronic instability, accumulated trauma, and the exhausting work of surviving systems that are fragmented, underfunded, and often inaccessible. People experiencing homelessness have typically exhausted every available option before sleeping in a car, couch-surfing, staying in unsafe relationships, cycling through temporary accommodation, or sleeping rough – not as a choice, but because there is genuinely nowhere else to go.

It is also worth noting that most homelessness is invisible. The people captured in these........

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