Housing Justice is a Christian charity working to alleviate homelessness in all its forms. We work in partnership with churches, community and faith groups to help provide those experiencing homelessness with a safe and stable home.
Our work is channelled through four main initiatives that aim to tackle homelessness in various different ways at a grassroots level. These include:
The Network
We help over 1,000 churches to respond to homelessness in their local area. Traditionally this has taken the form of providing support with setting up and operating a winter night shelter. Pre-pandemic we were able to help faith and community groups to provide beds for over 9,100 night shelter guests.
Communal shelters with shared airspace were not feasible during the Covid-19 pandemic so, as we move beyond Covid-19, churches are now reviewing how they can best serve people experiencing homelessness going forwards. Throughout the pandemic, we continued to support the 1,000+ churches and community groups in our network by communicating guidance, and providing resources to help them respond to homelessness in new and creative ways.
Hosting Programme
We work with a pool of volunteer hosts who welcome vulnerable individuals into their home.
These individuals include people arriving in the UK seeking sanctuary from war or persecution, those whose asylum claims have been rejected, and those with a complicated immigration status. These individuals often become the most vulnerable in our communities, as they do not have the right to work or access benefits.
We find them a safe, welcoming home where they have their own room, and ensure that they have the means to pay for living costs (food, other essentials, travel etc.) We currently have 17 hosts actively hosting 22 guests in the London area, with a further 23 hosts registered. We are just starting out in hosting in Wales and currently have 11 registered hosts, and have accommodated four guests. We are working hard to expand this across Wales.
Citadel
We help people experiencing homelessness to find and sustain a home.
Our Citadel programme is a successful model that relies on trained and supervised volunteers to help people in our communities out of homelessness. Our volunteers identify each individual’s specific needs and address them together. This could include connecting them with their local community, helping them to seek meaningful employment, accessing a sport or a new hobby, or helping individuals to access the health or financial services they need.
We also work with various agencies to provide a holistic approach to supporting each individual, helping them to be housed more quickly.
Faith in Affordable Housing
We work with churches of all denominations to release surplus land and redundant buildings for the creation of new truly affordable housing.
With many church denominations seeking solutions for surplus assets, FiAH is uniquely placed to help bring about greater partnership in order to deliver more genuinely affordable homes and alleviate homelessness.
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