Annual Review 2015–2016

Housing Justice

Vision

The Vision of Housing Justice is of a society where everyone has access to a home that truly meets their needs.

Mission

Housing Justice is the national voice of Christian action to prevent homelessness and housing need. We believe that human dignity is challenged by the lack of a decent home and we aim to mobilise Christians united in their determination to work with and for homeless and badly housed people.

Values

Recognisably Christian and consistent with the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

Respecting the worth and dignity of each individual – caring for the whole person.

Believing in social justice – priority to poor and marginalised people.

Working for the highest quality in all we do – professionalism.

Having authority – being recognised as a trusted source of expertise and information.

Valuing difference – welcoming diversity in staff, services and those whom we serve.

Working in partnership – recognising the strength of working with others, both internally and externally.

Having integrity – accountability to each other and to all our stakeholders.

Progress, achievements and performance

Yet again this report is set in the context of increasing numbers of people in England and Wales experiencing the trauma of homelessness. At the same time the very concept of social housing is under threat and more and more people are dependent upon the private rental sector for their homes. Sixty years ago in 1956 two Catholic women, Molly Walsh and Maisie Ward, decided that they needed to take action in response to the housing conditions faced by families in our country. They founded the Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS), a key forebear of Housing Justice, and challenged the Church and their fellow Christians to join them in making a difference. As we begin to mark this important anniversary we are taking that challenge into churches with renewed vigour, determined that the scourge of homelessness and housing need can be defeated.

We continued our schedule of Roadshows this year with a priority on working closely with local and regional partners, to make the day as useful and relevant as possible to the needs of the church in each part of the country. As the programme of Roadshows has progressed around the country we have developed and refined the agenda using broadly the same format but making sure to include speakers and workshop leaders able to address the agenda with in-depth knowledge, and reach out to the wide audience we have attracted from churches, local authorities, homelessness organisations and related voluntary agencies.

Church and Community Night Shelters

In October 2015 we held our National Shelter Coordinator Conference at Scargill House entitled “Forming Shelter Culture and seeing lives transformed”. Sessions included:

The Guest to Volunteer journey – developing a model to support shelter guests into volunteering.

Theological concepts that are practised and lived out in shelter work.

Forming shelter culture.

How we support shelter guests in their journey towards personal transformation?

The Scargill Guest Residential/Retreat which we planned with a creative therapeutic emphasis was also a success in May 2015 with guests, volunteers and staff from five shelter projects.

The Quality Mark continues to be effective in benchmarking standards as well as giving evidence to the excellent standards of practice that are already in shelter projects. Where we have worked with projects and made recommendations, we have seen improvements made for volunteers and most importantly for guests. Shelter projects that achieved QM standard awards found the process helpful and constructive.

This season we have supported churches and community groups to explore options and set up new Church and Community night shelter projects in Medway, Middlesbrough, Greater Manchester and Stoke on Trent.

The Shelter Impact report collated data and outcomes from 34 winter shelter projects across England and Wales: altogether 2,171 guests were accommodated and an estimated 231,000 volunteer hours were given to be alongside them through 70,000 separate volunteering attendances.

We have had a busy year with Shelter Forum meetings in London and Wales, running extra focus sessions in London, including supporting shelter projects to liaise with

Crisis at Christmas, strength-based practice, mindfulness and a role for mentoring and befriending in supporting move-on, supporting guests from Eastern Europe and working with young homeless people.

Mentoring and Befriending

This was the last year in which Housing Justice provided this service as a direct project. During the final stage of the project (2014–2016):

42 Outcomes Stars were completed with prospective mentees/befriendees, 6 post-project Outcomes Stars were completed;

29 matches were made;

11 relationships ended early and 1 was rematched;

13 relationships were completed by the end of March 2016 with 4 still ongoing.

The next stage of the project will focus on the delivery of training and consultancy to mentoring and befriending projects run by other agencies or churches. Two such days were provided in the current year.

Progress for mentees: One mentee (who is an Iraqi refugee) is working part time in media, which he equates partly to the relationship and support he had from his mentor. He took photographs at the Parliamentary reception for Housing Justice and has offered to film any other events or volunteer in any way he can because he feels he has been helped. Another mentee puts her positive ESA decision (which had gone to tribunal level) down to the supporting letter she was given under the programme.

Faith in Affordable Housing (FIAH) – England

We have responded to three policy consultations:

CLG committee on the Future of Housing Associations.

Proposed changes to National Planning Policy.

Church Buildings Review Group, a joint working group of the Archbishops’ Council and the Church Commissioners.

We represent churches on the Rural Partnerships Steering Group, which has been set up to explore the potential for housing associations to work with rural landowners to provide affordable housing for local people.

London Churches Property Forum, which brings together key London church property decision makers to hear from informed speakers, share information, network and explore possibilities for joint projects.

FIAH webpages were updated and a note on best value added.

At end of March 2016, discussions were continuing on 8 sites across England. Seventeen new enquiries were received for England 2015–2016.

Future: FIAH role is being widened to include advice on other sub market housing solutions such as Community Land Trusts, community housing and groups including Green Pastures.

Faith in Affordable Housing (FIAH) – Wales

Construction was well underway on two FIAH sites during the year, which will deliver 31 affordable homes: Church View in Merthyr Tydfil, and the former Carey Baptist church in Bridgend.

Discussions progressed on approximately 25 sites across Wales. Most notable are:

St John’s, Swansea, which will see five bungalows.

Land at Pentyrch Street Baptist church, Cardiff which will deliver six flats.

St Matthews in Newport, which Pobl Group will develop into twelve flats for older people.

We attended a meeting with CADW and denominational Property Heads to discuss the Historic Environment Bill and its impact on religious buildings. As a result, we were able to influence the production of a Strategic Action Plan for Religious Buildings.

We attended the Homes for Wales Rally in Cardiff, which was organised to highlight the need for more affordable housing in Wales. The rally was non-political and organised by Community Housing Cymru.

The role of the FIAH Coordinator in Wales continued to expand. This included meetings with Christians dealing with the refugee crisis and rehousing trafficked women and looking at alternative models of housing. Work was also carried out to prepare the case for setting up a Welsh arm of Housing Justice, which will launch in September 2016.

Advocacy and resourcing

Following the election in May 2015 we have sought to engage with the new ministerial team, particularly around the contribution of Night Shelters. We have also provided support and encouragement to members of the House of Lords, including our Chair Rt Rev James Langstaff, as they proposed amendments and debated the Housing and Planning Bill (now Act) in its passage through parliament. We held a reception in the House of Lords to mark the beginning of our celebration of the Sixtieth Anniversary of CHAS. The reception was addressed by Pastor Victoria Lawrence as well as our Chair, Chief Executive, and a Night Shelter volunteer.

The Service of Commemoration for those who died homeless in the London region takes place each year at St Martin-in-the-Fields, organised in partnership with Housing Justice and the Connection at St Martin’s. This year’s service, held on the 5th November, included the names of 194 people who died, whether still on the streets, in hostels or people who have moved in to accommodation after being homeless.

The London Christian Homeless Forum also met bi-monthly over the year, alternating venues between Housing Justice and Mount Street Jesuit Centre.

Our Birmingham based development worker continues to facilitate The Birmingham Christian Homeless Forum – a network of faith based services offering accommodation and support in the West Midlands area. She is currently working with a group of members, including Caritas Birmingham, to develop a new project which will provide accommodation and support to rough sleepers, including those with no recourse to public funds, all year round.

Homeless Sunday 24th January 2016

Sunday 24th January saw a large number of churches and individual Christians from England, Scotland and Wales praying for, remembering and committing themselves in tangible action to address the plight of the thousands of homeless people, as part of the 2016 Homeless Sunday campaign. For the first time ever we sold out of prayer cards. The highlight of this year’s campaign was the release of the song, On the Road Together written by Alastair Murray. Christians also took to Twitter to tweet and share the video, using the hashtag #HomelessWelcome to highlight this day.

In November 2015 the Catholic Bishops’ Conference issued a revised liturgical calendar for 2016. The changes included moving Racial Justice Sunday from September (where it has been marked ecumenically) to the third Sunday before Ash Wednesday. This meant that there was an unplanned clash with Homeless Sunday in January. Since Easter is much later in 2017 this will not recur then and so we will stick with the programme already announced making 22nd January Homeless Sunday 2017.

Migrant Destitution

For a number of years we have been involved in supporting hosting initiatives in London through the London Hosting project partnership. In 2015 we decided to take a more direct role in running a hosting scheme in London. Our Housing Justice Hosting project received a grant from NACCOM in the autumn of 2015 enabling us to start work on the project, followed by a grant from City Bridge Trust at the start of 2016 to employ a full time worker, since followed by 3 years funding from Oak Foundation. We have already recruited over 20 hosts willing to share their homes temporarily with migrants and refugees while their asylum or immigration casework is taken forward. Detailed risk management and safeguarding inform all our procedures, and we are also able to contribute to the work of NACCOM who recruited our Director of Projects to their national Board in January 2015.

Alongside this we have continued our participation in the Strategic Alliance on Migrant Destitution which is a partnership with Homeless Link, the British Red Cross, Refugee Action, Refugee Council, NACCOM and Migrants Rights Network. to form a Strategic Alliance on Migrant Destitution. The aim of the alliance is to bring together organisations from the homelessness and refugee sectors in order to create more accommodation, advice and support for destitute migrants and refugees in England. The first focus of the Alliance is on provision for migrants with No Recourse to Public Funds who originate from outside the European Economic Area.

Future developments

We continue to believe that individual Christians, churches and church-linked projects all have a key role to play in the prevention of homelessness and bad housing. In the coming year we will again strive to raise awareness with national and local government and in the broader homelessness sector of the valuable contribution made by churches in this area. At the same time, we will seek to improve the quality and range of services Christians and churches offer, in particular through our work with winter shelters and in encouraging and enabling churches to use spare land for the creation of new genuinely affordable housing.

During 2016–2017, in addition to celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of CHAS, we will plan to launch Housing Justice Cymru as a further development of our work in Wales. We will also be seeking to grow our relationship with black-led churches, building on our links with Pastor Victoria Lawrence, and our partnerships with the growing network of diocesan Caritas organisations in the Catholic Churches and Church Urban Fund Together organisations in the Church of England. Our relationship with the Quakers will be cemented by their employment of a housing intern who will be based at Housing Justice.

Income £484,144 Expenditure

£420,697

Board of Trustees

Susan Fallon (Treasurer)

John Gilbert (resigned October 2015)

Paula Harvey

Rt Rev James Henry Langstaff (Chair)

Brian O’Doherty

Jennifer Rossiter

Peter Sanders

Kaye Savage (resigned October 2015)

Richard Trahair

Peter Walters

Chrishanti Yorke

Income and expenditure

Housing Justice256 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3UJ

Tel: 020 3544 8094 www.housingjustice.org.uk

Charity no. 294666 Company no. 2017207

Restricted grants

£155,607

Unrestricted grants and donations

£210,045

Legacies £92,003

Other income £26,489

Fundraising £72,326

Resourcing and Advocacy

£71,371

Projects £248,599

Support £17,655

Governance £10,747