Housing Savannah, Inc.’s Post

🏠 New homes in Vauxhall to support young people leaving homelessness A major step forward for tackling youth homelessness in London has been approved. 📍 Lambeth Council has given the green light to transform 60 Sancroft Street, Vauxhall—a Duchy of Cornwall-owned property—into 16 affordable rental homes for young people aged 18–25 who have experienced or are at risk of homelessness. 🔑 Delivered as part of the Prince and Princess of Wales’ Homewards programme, the project will: •Provide rents capped at one-third of earnings •Require 12 tenants to be in full-time work, with Centrepoint helping the others into jobs •Be managed by Centrepoint, ensuring residents have the support needed to thrive The first homes are expected by 2026, offering not just shelter but stability and opportunity. The wider site also includes plans to redevelop a neighbouring health centre into 23 flats, with two offered as affordable housing. 📣 Councillor Martin Bailey said the project “embodies the very best of what planning should achieve,” delivering social value while respecting heritage. Backed by the Duchy of Cornwall and the Royal Foundation’s five-year Homewards campaign, this scheme shows how partnerships between charities, councils, and landowners can create lasting change. 💬 As Michelle Donovan of Centrepoint explained: this is about helping young people “hold down a job, end their reliance on benefits, and escape homelessness for good.”

📊 Poor housing costs society £18.5bn annually, according to data from BUILDING RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT LIMITED. Long-term homelessness costs £40,000 per person per year. But more than the financial cost, we know secure housing plays a huge role in people's mental health, their sense of belonging and overall wellbeing. It provides that feeling of safety, stability, and connection to your community. That is why funding homelessness charities has been such a long-standing commitment to our funding portfolio and crosses-cuts our wider work with charities, people, and communities to drive systematic change. Just take our work with people and communities in Great Yarmouth. A local alliance sparked by the “Everyone In” initiative brought together public and voluntary sector partners to co-design services with people who had lived experience of homelessness. Through peer research and collaborative planning, they uncovered critical gaps and built stronger, more responsive support systems. Some key examples to come out are: 🤝 Redesigning pathways and joining up services so there is ‘no wrong front door’ to services. 💬 Better communications to make it easier for people to understand the support available to them and how to access it. ✅ Improvements to outreach services This is exactly the kind of community-led, evidence-informed work which places people at the heart of change and addresses root causes, not just symptoms. Do you have examples of great community working to address homelessness in your area? Share below. Our download our evaluation of our homelessness portfolio here https://lnkd.in/e2eNqjxH And learnings from our work in six communities across England and Wales here https://lnkd.in/esnQeGKf

Great initiative from Hunter DFV Consortium member Jenny's Place Domestic Violence & Homelessness Support “Our aim for the Newcastle Tenancy Alliance is bring the public and private housing sectors together, to forge better partnerships which are underpinned by knowledge, education and trust." “With 90% of all rental property in NSW being owned by private landlords, we aim to shift the dial one landlord at a time, through a concept we have named ‘ethical tenancies’. “This innovative notion allows for a greater number of publicly-funded tenants to secure leases in the private property market.” Jenny’s Place will conduct a series of forums, made possible through grant funding from the Homes NSW Homelessness Innovation Fund." https://lnkd.in/grMeuaGW

A new report from the The Centre for Social Justice shines a light on a growing homelessness crisis — and what needs to be done about it. We're proud to have contributed our experience and expertise to 'No Place Like Home', as the charity leading Housing First support in the North East. The report highlights: - Rough sleeping is surging, with a 20% increase last year - The cost to local councils is soaring with £2.3 billion spent on temporary accommodation in England alone - Evidence shows Housing First is proven, effective, and cost-efficient - Yet, only about 2,000 Housing First places are currently available nationwide, while more than 16,000 people could benefit - A targeted expansion of Housing First in England should be fully integrated within existing and future homelessness strategies Our CEO Sarah Lister commented, "Housing First is a comparatively expensive service to deliver, but we know it works: short-term expense for longer-term gain. "A government that has the courage to extend funding cycles to enable strategic planning of trauma-informed support, and adds budget to aid the appropriate training of dedicated staff, would take us a giant leap closer to achieving a country free from homelessness." Read the full 'No Place Like Home' report here https://lnkd.in/eBJxKRBs #HopeNotHomelessness #HousingFirst #HomelessnessPolicy

Charlotte is facing an affordable housing crisis. Instead of waiting on government alone, faith leaders are stepping up. One church converted its old Sunday school into 21 affordable apartments. Another raised $6M to create Easter’s Home — studio apartments for residents making 30–50% of the area median income. The city launched a “Faith in Housing” program to help congregations turn underused land into housing and community assets. Why this matters: • Charlotte’s unsheltered homeless population just hit its highest level since 2010. • Faith organizations control valuable land in prime locations. • They already have community trust and a mission to serve. The result? When faith and civic leaders collaborate, underutilized property becomes homes. And homes become hope. This is what creative, impact-driven development looks like. Now imagine if cities across the country tapped into the same playbook. Article 🔗 from Queen City News, WJZY-TV: https://lnkd.in/eBjKSy3Q #AffordableHousing #CommunityImpact #HousingForAll #UrbanDevelopment #SocialImpact #FaithInAction

We heard from 1,320 frontline workers in the homelessness sector, from all over the UK. 85% reported an increase in demand for their services in the last 12 months, while 57% feel at risk of burnout, and just 34% say their pay covered their living costs. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/e8trr77g

In 2022-23, 13.1% of First Peoples in Victoria accessed homelessness services. Compare that to the 1.3% of non-Indigenous Victorians who needed this support. That’s why we need more social housing for Aboriginal Victorians, delivered by Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs). Homelessness can have a profound impact on your physical and mental health, education and access to work. For many Aboriginal people, not having a home also impacts the ability to foster the cultural and spiritual connections that are vital to wellbeing. We support the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s call to fully implement and fund Mana–na woorn-tyeen maar–takoort, the Victorian Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Framework. To read more about Yoorrook’s recommendations, head here - https://lnkd.in/gjqv24Fr

It’s dismaying that the majority of people still believe that homelessness is a result of poor choices, as the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago / NORC at the University of Chicago poll released yesterday. When we disregard the facts, we miss out on the realities of #homelessness. Most people experiencing homelessness cite a lack of #affordablehousing as the main cause. A 2023 UCSF Benioff Homelessness & Housing Initiative study found that over 80% of people became unhoused after losing their housing, NOT due to addiction or mental illness.⁠ ⁠ Real change starts with real solutions — and some of the most impactful efforts are happening through the #nonprofit Lotus Campaign and our strategic partnerships in the #realestate and social services sector - and without excessive government support. By working together to unlock #stablehousing and create a network of support, we are showing that compassion and innovation go hand in hand. https://lnkd.in/dKbYq7wr

This is the intro I recorded for our latest podcast, The Screwed Scale: Why We’re at 9.7 Out of 10 https://lnkd.in/g7PERj6p We need to face a hard truth: public support for housing as the solution to homelessness is slipping away. For years, nonprofits and campaigns have promised that we were “ending homelessness,” or even declared that we had ended certain types of homelessness. When those promises didn’t match reality, trust eroded. In Los Angeles, I’ve seen multimillion-dollar campaigns assure people that homelessness would end—when it didn’t, the public turned to criminalization. We need to acknowledge our role in that breakdown and change course before it’s too late. For a long time, messaging strategies assumed the public just didn’t believe homelessness was solvable. So the response was to repeat slogans, “homelessness is solvable,” “we can solve homelessness,” “housing ends homelessness.” But without stories behind those words, it became noise. When people saw homelessness grow in their own neighborhoods, they stopped believing us. We’ve clung to tired slogans, leaned too heavily on legacy media, and failed to adapt to modern communication. Worse, we’ve built a culture where feedback is stifled instead of embraced. Philanthropy either hasn’t funded advocacy and messaging at the scale needed to compete, or it has funded narrative change campaigns that produced little to no impact. The result is organizations stuck repeating the same talking points to legacy media and hosting webinars, as if either could shift the public narrative. Meanwhile, right-wing philanthropy is building full-scale media machines to flood the public with misinformation and propaganda. Time is running out. With each day that passes, both political will and public support for housing erode further, and if we don’t act now, we may lose the opportunity to turn this around. I wrote about much of this here: Make the Truth Louder: Fixing Our Narrative Strategy to Win the Fight for Housing https://lnkd.in/gRzEZGac Why Organizational Silence Is Sabotaging Housing First https://lnkd.in/g9BF3SAE Why the Homeless Sector Is Failing at Narrative Change—and How We Can Do Better https://lnkd.in/gVeAqmTJ Narrative Change: Haven't We Been Shoving Housing First Down Everyone's Throats? https://lnkd.in/gDv43s5k

Through the partnership of Urban Street Angels, Lucky Duck Foundation, and the City of Vista, North County now has its first transitional housing facility for youth who have aged out of foster care.