The Government must not neglect voluntary, faith, and community-based responses to homelessness in their forthcoming strategy

May 29, 2025

Bonnie Williams is Chief Executive of Housing Justice

With the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review due on 11th June, early indications are not positive when it comes to spending on homelessness provision. Given the size of the challenge, it seems unlikely the Government will be able to bring forward enough funding to buck the trend and prevent, or even reduce, people rough sleeping this winter.

Official figures released in February by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MCHLG) showed a 20% rise in rough sleeping compared to last year, on the back of year-on-year rises. In this context, the Government must ensure it maximises the impact of spend on homelessness provision by directing funding towards services that work, meet the needs of those experiencing homelessness and, crucially, provide value for money.

At Housing Justice, May is the month that we analyse the data collected from across our network of more than 75 night shelters in England, and we can see that more than 4,670 individuals (who would otherwise have been rough sleeping) used these 1,300 night shelter beds last winter.

Shelters provided by faith and community groups are a significant resource in the effort to end rough sleeping, and the army of almost 6,000 volunteers who staff these shelters, come at no cost to the taxpayer and take the strain from commissioned services. Given that in England alone, non-commissioned, community-run night shelters provide more emergency accommodation beds than there are beds in London’s biggest hospital, we believe the Government should be targeting its limited resources at community-based services like these.

Research shows that attempts to make homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring are more likely to be successful when individuals feel they belong to a community. Whether you love or hate Maslow’s Theory of Self Actualisation or prefer Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory, or Brendtro’s Circle of Courage, it is clear that individuals need to feel a sense of belonging through relationships and social connections in order to thrive within their community.

As a sector, we are often so caught up with meeting people’s most basic survival needs, of catching them at their lowest ebb, that we rarely do what needs to be done to prevent homelessness recurring – enabling a sense of belonging.

The single most common outcome for individuals attending our shelters’ day services is that they go to a welcoming, warm and safe space where they meet volunteers from their own communities, who help them to move on out of rough sleeping and into their own home. Our shelter colleagues tell us that individuals often continue to use these day services when they have moved into a home as they have a community there.

We have seen first-hand the enormous value of enabling belonging through our own community integration and tenancy sustainment programme. Citadel has seen continuously positive outcomes with 95% of people supported by the project remaining in their new home after a period of homelessness, and a 94% engagement rate since April 2023.

We have recently written an open letter to Angela Rayner MP urging her to do the following three things as we approach the Comprehensive Spending Review and the Government’s new Homelessness Strategy which is expected in late summer/autumn 2025:

  • Work formally with night shelters, day centres and faith and community groups to develop the new, cross-departmental Homelessness Strategy.
  • Replace the Night Shelter Transformation Fund with an Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund, to support and expand the vital work of these groups and empower communities to end homelessness in their areas.
  • Mandate local authorities to work with these groups on the ground to develop their own strategies.

 

Given the excellent value for money and outcomes provided by faith and community-based services such as night shelters and Citadel, the huge financial savings they create for local authorities, and the strain they take from commissioned services, we believe it is vital that the Government maximises its homelessness budget by increasing funding for community-based solutions, or we will only see a further alarming increase in rough sleeping next winter.

Ends