Policy and Strategy Report: Shelter's Approach to Homelessness Crisis

This report delves into Shelter, a British charity's policies and strategies aimed at alleviating homelessness. It outlines the organization's aims, scope of work, policy research, and campaigning efforts to reduce homelessness in England. The report identifies key social problems such as lack of financial support, landlord discrimination, and mental health issues contributing to homelessness. It highlights Shelter's objective to end homelessness by providing advice, practical assistance, and advocacy for those in need. The document further discusses the principal arguments and findings related to the increasing number of individuals experiencing rough sleeping, the challenges they face in securing housing, and the impact on their physical and mental health. It concludes by emphasizing Shelter's commitment to ensuring everyone has access to safe and affordable housing, and campaigns to raise awareness and provide support to combat homelessness effectively.

POLICY AND STRATEGY REPORT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Aim of the organisation and scope of work, policy research and campaigning..........................1
Identification of social problems and objectives of document....................................................2
Principal arguments and findings.................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Strategy is made by the company in order to achieve its goals and objectives and also to
increase their market share. Whereas policy is the set of regulations which is designed by the
organisation by taking decisions. Shelter is the charity organisation which is established in
Britain. Its main objective is to provide houses or advices to the homeless people. This report
will discuss the aim and scope of the organisation along with its research and campaigning.
Further it will evaluate social problems objectives of document. It will also shed light on
document principles and findings.
MAIN BODY
Aim of the organisation and scope of work, policy research and campaigning.
Shelter is the voluntary organisation which is registered as the charity company. Their
aim is to reduce bad housing and homelessness condition at England. It provides advices to the
people who are in need and also solve issues related to bad housing by asking government
authorities and making them aware about the need of new policies so that improvement can be
made in the life of homeless people. This voluntary organisation works in partnership with
shelter Cymru and Housing rights services (Lobb and Geraghty, 2020). Shelter does not only
provide advice to the needy people but it also gives practical assistance to those people. This has
wide scope in the future because it provides advocacy to homeless people who are in condition
of insecure housing and are at the edge of becoming homeless. They provide support services
via online and offline. Company does campaigning on the issues in the homelessness sectors.
Shelter wants that no one remain homeless and every individual should have home. Further this
voluntary organisation also access that how many social homes are required in order to handle
housing crisis. In order to come out form covid crisis company have also started campaign to
protect jobs of people and also to reduce homelessness. This charity organisation is continuously
working on new social housing in the covid crisis also and have set long term goal to make
social homes about 3.1 million in 20 years.
It is noticed that organisation have set long term goal way ago but due to this pandemic it
has become greater urgency to work on this issue (Tsai, O'Toole and Kearney, 2017). Shelter
want to bring change in the life of an individual and also community as a whole. Company focus
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much on this issue because house is the fundamental requirement of humans just like healthcare
services and education. In Britain and all over the world it has seen that there are millions of
people who are facing homelessness, discrimination, bad conditions, high rents etc. so that is
why company has made strategy which they have called as the national emergency which
focuses on safe homes. Safe homes is the right of everybody. It does not mean that an individual
should have only wanted roof on their head but their right is getting safe and affordable roof. In
last two decades it has observed that private housing rents has doubled. Rents are rising at fast
speed and as compare to that income of an individual is not much rising. The rate of percentage
from which income is rising is less than the percentage rate from which housing rents are
growing. Shelter support private renters. That is why they campaign for the consumer protection
rights and improving conditions of people (Bretherton, 2017). They also pressurize legal
authorities to make rights for renters who wanted safe and secure place.
It is observed that public housebuilding work is dropping down and that is forcing people
to live into expensive and poor quality rented house. So that is why Shelter is working hard to
build social homes. The give advice to the people who are suffering from homelessness. So that
is why company focusing on to provide such service which gives best advices to people in need.
This voluntary company is doing campaigning since it is founded and it will continue doing until
everyone will get safe and affordable housing. Company have founded that many hidden
homeless people are living in slums in which the housing condition which is poor and
unhygienic. They have also made strategy in which they provide housing retention services
which involve housing budget (Frazer, 2021). They also provide social services to the people
who are living at complex housing condition and services which they provide are recovery
support service, benefits acquisition, transportation, financial literacy training etc. in the research
conducted by Shelter they have observed that people are getting difficulty in finding out new
house because they are facing discrimination against housing benefits and also people are not
having enough funds for the deposit of their new house. There are many families with children
end up living at street because of lack of funds.
Identification of social problems and objectives of document
Homelessness is the social problem which is identified in this document and includes
various social factors which are lack of money, lack of family support, landlord discrimination,
mental and physical health problems, drug and alcohol addictions etc. it is found that landlord is
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not treating every tenant equally (Mostowska, 2020). Majorly discrimination is happening with
women and families who are having children. When asked to the landlords then it is found that
they are banned families who are having children. Another social factor is related to money.
People are saying that their landlords are demanding more money for deposit and due to lack of
money they are not able to give deposit amount. And because of this they are forced to live on
street only because they are not having enough money to live in private rented houses. Apart
from deposit other barrier which is faced by people is absence of guarantor or reference.
In this case also people are homeless because they are not having guarantor to present. It
has also found that people are facing homelessness and due to which they are ending up rough
sleeping because they are not having any close one who can provide them accommodation. As
due to alcohol or drug misuse their families or friends have broken with them. As people who
are homeless said that because of their alcohol misuse their relationship has breakdown and that
is why they have to leave their settled house. Mental health is also the cause of homelessness
(Tsai and et.al., 2019). There are many people who are facing depression issues and due to that
they are not able to pay rental amount and got evicted by landlord.
The objective of this document is to end homelessness from Britain. As it is observed
that people who are facing rough sleeping has almost got doubled. This should not happen and
also it must be prevented. Rough sleeping is the difficult condition. People are getting evicted
from their settled houses and also not getting support from legal authorities. Sleeping on the
street does not hurt self esteem but also impact physical and mental health of a person. People
also find difficulty in getting jobs who lives at street. There are many voluntary organisation
who are working to improve people's life by fulfilling its complex needs. Organisations like
Shelter work with people to solve their problems which are related to homelessness, mental and
physical health problems, substance misuse etc. so that is why many programs are organised by
these organisation where they provide support to individual (Kaufman, 2017). The key aim or
major aim is to provide help to the people so that they can get accommodation.
Voluntary organisation also help people in settling down disputes with their land owner
and also give them employment and education and training benefits. To help people to come out
from difficult situations is very important. In order to raise standard of living it is very important
that almost every individual is getting basic facilities which includes home, food, clothes,
education and healthcare. It is also found that root cause of every problem which is situated in
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the society is because of discrimination (Avramov, 2018). The problem of homelessness also
have to cut from roots and for that it is important to remove discrimination from the society.
Principal arguments and findings
This documents is about the individuals having rough sleep and loosing their settled
home. The number of people having roughness in sleeping is increasing while there are many
reasons for the families and individuals to lose their well- settled home. Moreover, there are o lot
of reasons that makes it hard for such people to find and new home. Some of the common
effects of not having proper sleep include, abusive behaviour, loss of possession and not having
proper access to services such as getting medication and so on (Mackie, Johnsen and Wood,
2017). It is seen that homelessness is considered when one is sleeping on streets as there is not
other place to stay, squatting as one is not legally allowed to stay there and many such reasons.
On the other hand, rough sleeping is to have a bed down in open air and living in the places that
are not designed for habitation. From the data gathered, it can be seen that there are almost 5000
individuals having rough sleeping within Britain and this number is increasing each year.
Moreover, there are 7500 people in London who are sleeping on the streets and is six times
higher than the number of rough sleeping per night. There are many reasons behind people
having rough sleeping but the maximum number for the same is seen in the Central part of
London (Martineau, and et.al., 2019).
These areas have high rate in rough sleeping as there is increased cost of housing and
private rents which makes it unable for many individuals to afford these. The results show that
the individuals with NRPF are more likely to have the risk of being homeless as they have no
access to housing and related benefits. Moreover, these individuals are not even allowed to
work. There is an increase in the number of rough sleepers from last five years within London,
England. It can be seen that rough sleepers the ones that have support needs. These needs are
also the reason behind the people ending up on streets. The reasons behind people losing their
settled home are eviction, breakdown of a relation ship, and even discrimination behaviours
from the side of landlords. Not just this, these individuals will have to face many challenges in
their aim of finding new home (McGrath and et.al., 2018). In some cases the council does not
provide with the needed support and also friends and family not supporting the idea. Not having
an enough amount of money is yet another and very common reason behind people having
difficulty in finding new home. Some impact of having rough sleeping leads to deterioration of
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the physical as well as mental health of these individuals, isolating from their friends and family
and lose their ability to find a job. To avoid such conditions, individuals must have access to
safety and have the availability of affordable housing.
CONCLUSION
Through this report it can be concluded that the goal of Shelter organisation is to remove
the issue of homelessness from the community. They want that every individual must get roof on
their head. For this purpose company also does campaigning so that awareness can be spread in
regards of homelessness. So that people come forward to help such people. The social problem
which is discussed in this report is Homelessness. There are various reasons of spreading
homelessness like lack of money, no supportive family members and friends, excessive
consumption of alcohol or drugs etc. just because of all these reasons people are forced to live
on streets. It is also analysed that discrimination is the main factor of homelessness. So Shelter is
helping people to come out from the situation of homelessness.
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REFERENCE
Books and Journals
Avramov, D. ed., 2018. Coping with homelessness: Issues to be tackled and best practices in
Europe. Routledge.
Bretherton, J., 2017. Homelessness and gender reconsidered. European Journal of Homelessness,
pp.1-22.
Frazer, A., 2021. Homelessness in Sierra Leone: A Brief Overview. Available at SSRN
3847326.
Kaufman, N.Κ., 2017. Homelessness: A comprehensive policy approach. Housing the homeless,
pp.335-346.
Mackie, P., Johnsen, S. and Wood, J., 2017. Ending rough sleeping: what works. An
international evidence review.
Martineau, and et.al., 2019. Safeguarding, homelessness and rough sleeping: an analysis of
safeguarding adults reviews.
McGrath and et.al., 2018. Bursting bubbles of interiority: Exploring space in experiences of
distress and rough sleeping for newly homeless people.
Mostowska, M., 2020. Metaphors and evidence. Producing numbers in national homelessness
counts. Housing, Theory and Society. 37(3). pp.339-356.
Tsai, J. and et.al., 2019. Public exposure and attitudes about homelessness. Journal of
Community Psychology. 47(1). pp.76-92.
Tsai, J., O'Toole, T. and Kearney, L.K., 2017. Homelessness as a public mental health and social
problem: New knowledge and solutions. Psychological services. 14(2). p.113.
online
Lobb. A and Geraghty. L., 2020. Which charities are fighting homelessness in the UK. [Online].
Available through: <https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/which-charities-are-
helping-fight-homelessness-in-the-uk/>
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