Our strategy
In 2019, after the biggest consultation in Shelter’s history, we committed to a 10-year strategy designed to transform ourselves, the housing system and the country. It set ambitious goals and we’ve made significant progress towards them.
We believe a home is a fundamental right.
A safe home is the foundation on which our lives are built. It opens the door to employment, health, education, and is the basis of strong communities.
Millions of people in Britain are denied the right to a safe home. Shelter exists to defend that right.
Because home is everything.
The housing emergency
Our research, experience and the evidence we’ve gathered since 2019 mean we have a greater understanding of the scale, nature and impact of the housing emergency. The housing system right now is unaffordable, unfit, unstable and discriminatory. As a result, the situation is a national emergency
Our research, Denied the Right to a Safe Home, shows that
17.5 million people
are trapped by the housing emergency
Over 109,000 households
are living in temporary accommodation
1 in 5 renters
say their home is damaging their mental or physical health
The next three years: 2022 - 2025
Our ambitions
We’re even more strongly compelled to act than in 2019. Building on three years of successes and lessons, we will continue to work for change: with individuals, in communities and across society.
1. A new generation of social homes
By 2025
A broad public movement is demanding a new generation of social homes
In Scotland, everyone waiting in temporary accommodation can access a social home
We must lay the foundations for a 21st-century generation of social housing in England. In Scotland, we’ll fight for better social housing, available to more people and built more quickly.
We’re talking about safe, secure, decent homes at rents people on low incomes can afford.
For people living at the sharp end of the housing emergency, homes like these have the power to transform lives. For all of us, they transform communities, enabling young people to stay, older people to find security, businesses to survive and diversity to flourish.
Across England and Scotland, we’ll launch an ambitious campaign to achieve our mission of a new generation of social homes.
2. Housing rights - right now
By 2025
Individuals and communities are equipped to fight housing injustice
People of Colour will have increased access to a safe home
Everyone’s housing rights are strengthened and enforced
Over the next three years, we’ll fight for housing rights where they’re under immediate threat. We’ll do this through campaigning, advocacy and strategic litigation.
Our national emergency helplines will continue to be a lifeline for people at immediate risk of losing their home, preventing homelessness every single day.
We’ll take a more targeted approach to the support and legal advice we provide, focusing on cases where we can make change happen.
In England, we'll continue our Renters’ Reform Bill campaign, as well as build on the success of our campaign against 'no DSS' discrimination. In Scotland, we’ll lead a public campaign to enshrine the United Nations' right to adequate housing into Scots Law.
Through research, we'll better understand the systemic discrimination faced by People of Colour in housing. Then we'll work with communities and partner organisations to address our findings.
3. A shift of power in our fight for home
By 2025
Expertise by experience, anti-racism and climate justice are at the heart of Shelter
Shelter was founded as a social justice organisation. To win the fight for home, social justice must be at the forefront, not only in the work we do to change the country but in how we work internally.
That’s why the direct experience of homelessness, the threat of homelessness, and the search for a safe home must be at the heart of everything we do. We’re transforming Shelter to make sure this is the case.
There’s no social justice without racial justice. Over the next three years, we’ll carry out a specific programme of work to move Shelter towards our goal of becoming an anti-racist organisation.
Our other major priority is our contribution to climate justice. Many of the forces that have led us to the precipice of climate catastrophe are the same as those which have deepened inequality, and we must learn from this.
Home is everything
Whether you’re reading this as a Shelter supporter, a funder or potential funder, a partner, or if you’re new to Shelter and our work, you have a role to play. We set ourselves ambitious goals in 2019 and they are now more urgent than ever.