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Defending the right to a safe home

Greg Beales explains more about Shelter’s three-year strategy published this week

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Picture: Getty
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“The basic social deal – that a job and an income leads to a home – is breaking down” writes Greg Beales of @Shelter #ukhousing

Greg Beales explains more about Shelter’s three-year strategy published this week @gregbeales @Shelter #ukhousing

Defending the right to a safe home – @gregbeales explains how Shelter’s new strategy is going to work #ukhousing @Shelter

We’ve got so used to talking about a housing crisis in our country that at times I think we lose sight of what’s really happening around us.

Earlier this year, I sat on the BBC Breakfast sofa with a young, up-and-coming documentary maker, Datshiane Navanayagam.

Having experienced homelessness when she was younger, she had made a powerful and compelling film for Channel 4’s Dispatches which challenged old assumptions and brought home the appalling waste for individuals and society.

The majority of those who are now homeless are in work. The basic social deal – that a job and an income leads to a home – is breaking down.

Rough sleeping has returned with a vengeance. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of much greater housing failure.

“The basic social deal – that a job and an income leads to a home – is breaking down.”

There are as many as six million households where the right to a home is under threat because of poor conditions, affordability or insecurity.

Adults and children live in grossly unfit and unsafe conditions, discrimination is rampant in private renting and we are building the fewest social homes in 70 years, at a time when more and more people desperately need them.

This week at Shelter we published a new strategy that we hope will mark a turning point, not just for our own charity but the country as well.


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Shelter was founded 52 years ago, not by the wealthy or powerful but as a community organisation whose purpose was to change society. It is in this tradition that our new strategy aims to achieve the changes millions of people need.

At the centre of what we publish is a simple mission. We exist to defend the right to a safe home. We will do so fearlessly, and with determination, and we hope that we will not do it alone.

Because without a safe home, no one can achieve their full potential. With millions whose right to a safe home is under threat, neither can the country.

This is a national emergency, and one that demands fearless, ambitious action. Ms Navanayagam is one of many who know that we cannot go on like this, and her film was her contribution to making change possible.

She is just one of a new generation of campaigners and activists, problem solvers and professionals who represent a growing movement seeking to confront these deep-seated problems.

For the first time as an organisation, Shelter is committing in this strategy to 10-year as well as three-year goals, to work for lasting change.

We will focus on three major changes. The first is ensuring there is help for those who struggle to manage their housing, including where they are stigmatised or marginalised.

Next is rights for those who rent so that renters have greater security, do not face discrimination and are able to understand and enforce their rights. The third is a transformation of the debate about social housing to create a new consensus and to build new homes for those in need.

In our services we will be a rock in the storm every day for those who need us, extending our digital advice and creating better provision for those with complex needs.


Watch a video about Shelter’s 2019-2022 strategy

At the same time, in this strategy we commit to building the movement of people who will make that lasting change possible. That means working with everyone who shares our values and our determination.

Already, with the National Housing Federation, we have developed a joint campaign to challenge the disgusting spectre of prejudice which is so widespread across the private renting sector and which sees our fellow citizens discriminated against as if they were second class for nothing other than receiving support through the benefit system.

“There has rarely been a time when change was needed more than it is today.”

And already with Grenfell United and an array of commissioners from across the political spectrum we have developed a commission on the future of social housing – the Big Conversation – to help chart a better future for much-needed social housing.

We hope this will just be the beginning. We plan in the next three years to have 500,000 supporters join us in our mission to respond to the emergency through campaigning, giving, volunteering and donating.

We want our hubs and Shelter shops to become the base for community organising and activism to bring about change for individuals, for communities and for our society as a whole.

There has rarely been a time when change was needed more than it is today. But as the crisis has got deeper, we see more people rising up to demand solutions. It is people who can power the change we seek.

Greg Beales, director of campaigns, policy and communications, Shelter

Cathy at 50 campaign

Cathy at 50 campaign

Our Cathy at 50 campaign calls on councils to explore Housing First as a default option for long-term rough sleepers and commission Housing First schemes, housing associations to identify additional stock for Housing First schemes and government to support five Housing First projects, collect evidence and distribute best practice.

Click here to read more about Cathy at 50

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