Wales housed 568 fewer people in temporary accommodation. Cardiff is 524 of that

10,339 people were living in temporary accommodation in Wales on 30 June 2026, the Welsh Government reported on 27 August. That is 568 fewer than on the same date a year earlier, and the lowest June figure since the monthly count began in April 2023. Almost the whole of that fall belongs to one city.

Cardiff was housing 3,412 people in June 2025 and 2,888 in June 2026, a drop of 524. Across the other 21 local authorities the net movement over the same 12 months was 44 people. Several went the other way: Flintshire rose from 496 to 580, Merthyr Tydfil from 80 to 120, Blaenau Gwent from 56 to 87. Cardiff still holds more than a quarter of everyone in temporary accommodation in Wales, and the city's own peak of 3,606 was as recent as December 2024.

The longer series tells a second story. Since the count opened in April 2023 the Wales total has fallen by 221, from 10,560. Over those same three years the number of dependent children under 16 in temporary accommodation has fallen by 1,019, from 3,246 to 2,227. StatsWales publishes a total and an of-which under-16 count and nothing in between, so the subtraction is the desk's: close to 800 more adults are in temporary accommodation in Wales now than when the monthly returns started.

Housing is devolved, and the law meant to move the number is already written. The Homelessness and Social Housing Allocation (Wales) Act 2026 took Royal Assent on 1 April. Almost none of it is in force. Section 43 leaves commencement to an order from Welsh Ministers, who may appoint different days for different purposes and different areas, and section 44 already assumes the work may be unfinished on 31 December 2028, when the first progress report to the Senedd falls due. Jayne Bryant, the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government, said when the Senedd passed the Bill in February that it was "rooted in the lived experience of homelessness". Until the orders are laid, the 22 councils are working to the old duties.

Two cautions sit on the figures. Vale of Glamorgan has filed no return since October 2025 after a system upgrade went wrong, and that October figure is being carried forward as an estimate every month since. Rough sleeping is counted separately and was estimated at 158 across Wales on 30 June, with Cardiff reporting 39. The next monthly figures are published on 24 September.