Landlords for homelessness charity to compete with Shelter and Crisis?

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 13/12/2022 - 14:43
https://choicehousingtrust.org/

Reply to the comment left by Robert M at 13/12/2022 - 15:26
OK so you don't have to answer this. But what's the % of your trust's revenue that houses people. And how does that compare to Shelter and Crisis.

Sounds like what I've been doing for years. And still doing. And doing even more, when some tenants rents are £500, yet all surrounding rents are £850.

Got someone leaving tomorrow into Council bungalow paying £506 for last 5 years. Got family member moving in paying £750. Can't even look after family now as don't know what is coming next, although agreed no rent increase for 3 years-And it will probably be for 10 years.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 13/12/2022 - 15:34
100% of our revenue goes toward providing the housing and support service, and to date we have housed and supported around 650 people who were experiencing homelessness, and could not access either social housing (not entitled to it) or private rented housing (no private landlord would accept them as tenants).

I can't answer for Shelter or Crisis, but my understanding is that Shelter don't house anyone directly (they may refer in to other housing providers). I've no idea how many people Crisis house, or whether they house them directly or by referring in to other housing providers. I believe that Crisis do fund some housing providers, but I have no details on this.

Reply to the comment left by Robert M at 13/12/2022 - 15:56
I meant what % goes to paying rent as opposed to paying operating expenses including salaries and pensions.

The reason I ask is that if there were some index somewhere that people making charitable donations to house homeless people could consider when parting with their cash and people like Shelter and Crisis appeared at the bottom of the list that would have a public benefit.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 13/12/2022 - 16:16
Mmmm, it's not that simple, as there are a whole host of costs that have to be included in the cost of providing housing, e.g. repairs and maintenance, insurances, utilities, office operating costs, HMO compliance, licences, furnishings, legal costs, fire risk assessments, etc, etc, etc. There are probably dozens of different costs involved in providing accommodation, as I'm sure most landlords will understand.

Our costs (overheads) are independently assessed and scrutinised, and have to be evidenced, and found to be fair and reasonable.

I don't propose to give you a full breakdown of all our operating costs, and of course our staff (support workers, handyman, cleaners, gardener, bookkeeper, etc) do need to be paid fairly, so I'm not sure how it benefits anyone to separate out these fair and reasonable staff costs (or other operating costs). Unless you are proposing that we don't pay any of our workers? (in which case we close and don't house anyone).

Reply to the comment left by DAMIEN RAFFERTY at 13/12/2022 - 10:13
I aggree Damien. I have given some help to the Salvation Army recently. My opinion of Shelter, the so called charity, matches that of yours - and no doubt many other landlords.
It came to my attention that the Nationwide building society donate quite a large amount of money to Shelter. I have a number of accounts with NW and I was moved to contact them and point out just some of the failings (in my view) of the funds available to this uncharitable organisation. Also mentioning the fact that they have a reserve of some £14,000,000.
To date I have not even had an acknowledgement of my letter to them. So, So sad. This rouge charity should be exposed for what it is.

Reply to the comment left by Robert M at 13/12/2022 - 15:56
I volunteered at Crisis at Xmas in 2019 in one of their day centres, and can attest to the incredible work they do, not only at Xmas, but all year round. They can't be compared to Shelter which does sod all to house people or provide practical support, other than advice over the phone about how to screw their landlords.

We all love this idea and readers might like to take a look at Ethex whose slogan is Make money do good. It’s somewhere between an investment and a donation.

Wow! What a response! I half expected to be ridiculed and called an idiot for suggesting this, but to receive a positive response and find a contributor already doing something similar was even better.

Could a new charity work with organisations like the one Robert M runs? I'd certainly hope so.

There is a realism of paid employees over volunteers is one that is often misunderstood. To make successful charities work, you often need full time posts filled with professional people. People with the skills needed usually have mortgages to pay and their own families to feed.

So, could we do it? Could we steal some of Shelters donations? Where there is space for one operation, there's usually space for a competitor.