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FEANTSA has developed a European Typology of Homelessness and housing exclusion (ETHOS) as a means of improving understanding and measurement of homelessness in Europe, and to provide a common "language" for transnational exchanges on homelessness. This typology was launched in 2005 and is used for different purposes - as a framework for debate, for data collection purposes, for policy purposes, monitoring purposes, and in the media.

It is important to note that this typology is an open exercise which makes abstraction of existing legal definitions in the EU members states. ETHOS is a "home"-based definition that uses the physical, social and legal domains to create a broad typology of homelessness and housing exclusion. ETHOS classifies homeless people according to their living situation:

• rooflessness (without a shelter of any kind, sleeping rough)
• houselessness (with a place to sleep but temporary in institutions or shelter)
• living in insecure housing (threatened with severe exclusion due to insecure tenancies, eviction, domestic violence)
• living in inadequate housing (in caravans on illegal campsites, in unfit housing, in extreme overcrowding).

Homelessness is perceived and tackled differently according to the country. ETHOS was developed through a review of existing definitions of homelessness and the realities of homelessness which service providers are faced with on a daily basis. ETHOS categories therefore attempt to cover all living situations which amount to forms of homelessness across Europe. Different target groups (children, women, men, older people from different ethnic or immigrant populations and with different disabilities/difficulties) can come under one or more of these categories. ETHOS was slightly revised between 2005 and 2007 to reflect emerging realities and to improve the labelling.

The ETHOS approach confirms that homelessness is a process (rather than a static phenomenon) that affects many vulnerable households at different points in their lives. The 2005 Review of Statistics on Homelessness in Europe of the European Observatory on Homelessness states that "Policies to address homelessness include three main elements prevention, accommodation and support. Prevention policies imply an understanding of both the causes of homelessness and the pathways into homelessness. Accommodation provision involves elements of emergency or temporary accommodation and transitional accommodation as well as permanent housing (with or without support). Increasingly policies to address homelessness recognise the need for support as well as housing and that support is needed for people who are homeless, have been homeless or may become homeless. This understanding of the policy basis indicates the need for an understanding of the process of homelessness and housing deprivation as well as the profiles of homeless people. ETHOS has been developed using this pathways approach."