Strategic plan 2025-29

England’s housing system is unfit, unaffordable and unjust.

Millions of people are living in overcrowded, dangerous, unstable or unaffordable housing. Hundreds of thousands are stuck for years in damaging ‘temporary accommodation’. Thousands of people sleep on our streets every night.

The lack of truly affordable social housing fuels the housing emergency. There are record numbers of households on social housing waiting lists. While they are waiting for a secure and affordable home people are forced into expensive, precarious and unsuitable housing in the private rented sector without adequate protection or regulation.

There is deep discrimination. People on low incomes or receiving benefits, People of Colour, those with a disability, refugees and single parents, or people who are LGBTQ+ are more likely to be affected by the housing emergency.

Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home for everyone. We believe that a safe home is everything. It’s the foundation on which lives are built. Secure housing opens the door to employment, good health and good education outcomes.

Over the past three years, under our 2019-29 strategy, we have brought England’s housing emergency to the fore of the nation’s political debate and fought for and won key legislative and system change.

We made the case for the introduction of a new Social Housing Regulation Act to pave the way for better regulated social housing. We have campaigned for the end to ‘hope value’, unlocking more land for social housing. It was Shelter that secured improvements to private renting in the Renters’ Rights Bill – including the commitment to ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions. Our research and case studies are repeatedly cited in parliamentary debate. In every room that matters we’re making sure that people experiencing homelessness and housing hardship are being heard.

Everything we are able to do is because of the generosity of our supporters, the tenacity of our clients, the activism of our campaigners and the professionalism of our teams. We stand together and have started to make important steps towards a better, fairer housing system. But we’re only at the beginning of making the system work for everyone. We have so much more to do to build on our progress and secure real and lasting change.

Shelter’s approach to achieving our strategic goals is to evolve as we learn, continue to make progress and respond to emerging needs or opportunities.

In 2025-29 we will focus on three strategic goals:

• Demand and secure a new generation of social homes
  The lack of social homes is the root cause of the housing emergency and building more social homes is the only sustainable solution

• Strengthen and enforce the right to a safe home for all
  The housing emergency is fuelled by deep injustice and discrimination. We can protect more people by improving housing rights in general and supporting people in their everyday battles to enforce existing rights

• Build a coalition to secure long-term change
  We can’t achieve our strategic goals alone. Making the change that is needed will be a team effort. We need people and organisations to join us locally and nationally.

With the support of our partners, donors, and campaigners, our staff and volunteers will work alongside other organisations, communities and the people most affected by the housing emergency to co-produce solutions and actions

Across all three goals, we will continue to put anti-racism, equity and inclusion at the centre of our decision-making. We are well placed to use our platform to continue to build a powerful movement for change that decision makers can’t ignore.

Shelter will keep on fighting until there is a safe and secure home for everyone.

Helen MacNamara CB, Chair of Shelter

• Every 3 minutes, a household in England becomes homeless.

• Almost half (45%) of families in temporary accommodation have been there for longer than two years.

• Delivery of social rent homes has decreased steadily since 2010, from almost 40,000 a year to around 10,000 a year.

• There are more than 164,000 children homeless in temporary accommodation. This is the highest since records began in 2004.

• Between April 2023 and March 2024, councils spent a total of £2.3 billion on temporary accommodation. The amount spent has almost doubled (97% increase) in the last five years.

• Two thirds of private renters are falling behind on rent payments or struggling to pay rent.

• Black-led households are 12 times more likely to be living in temporary accommodation than White-led households.

Statistics above are accurate as of March 2025.

Providing help to individuals will always be at the heart of our work in communities. But the scale of demand means that we simply cannot provide direct support to everyone who needs it.

The only way we can reach everyone is by securing real change in the housing system. Not just in policymaking, but also with the frontline practices that determine whether policy is delivered effectively, or not.

Our model for achieving change:

• We work at an individual, local and national level

• We start by understanding the problems and solutions

• We respond with activism, designed to move us into change

• Change delivers large-scale and lasting impact in the housing system.

Lived experience

Lived experience insight is at the heart of our strategy. Our 2025-29 strategic goals have been co-created with people with lived experience, building on the deliberative research that informed our 2024 general election manifesto in England.

Anti-racism

Three years ago, in our 2022-25 plan, we explicitly recognised that the fight for home is a fight against racism. We committed to centring anti-racism in our work. In this 2025-29 plan, anti-racism, equity and inclusion is embedded in all three strategic goals. We are calling out systemic racism in housing, working alongside the people most affected and beginning to implement the recommendations of an extensive review into how People of Colour access and experience our own services.

Fundraising

We are operating in an increasingly competitive and challenging fundraising environment. In response, we are developing a new strategic focus and approach to our income generation – one that will not only fuel but strengthen and amplify all of our strategic activities.

Demand and secure a new generation of social homes

Social housing is the foundation of a functional housing system.

The lack of social homes - truly affordable housing - is the main cause of the housing emergency. Good quality, genuinely affordable, well-managed and well-regulated social rent homes are the only sustainable solution.

While the current government has committed to ‘the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation’, delivery plans remain unclear.

We must ensure that warm words and good intentions are converted into action. We need 90,000 social homes delivered each year for a decade, to end the housing emergency – and we need to ensure an equitable approach to social home allocation.

The government needs to create a regulatory environment that allows social homes to be built at scale and they need to invest in building that social housing.

We will need a coalition of voices: we will work with individuals and organisations, those most affected by the lack of social homes and by inequity in the housing system, to make the case for change with us.

Shelter will work to secure the delivery the social homes we need, to rebuild our housing system.

In 2025-29 we want to:

• Keep the housing emergency and the solutions on the national agenda

• Secure government commitments to delivering a new generation of social rent housing.

Ways we’ll deliver this include:

• A new Invest in Social Housing campaign

• Mobilising people to actively support social home building in their communities

• Recruiting influencers and decision-makers to support social home building

• Draw attention, through campaigning and fundraising activities, to the effects of the lack of social housing.

Strengthen and enforce the right to a safe home for all

The lack of social housing is the main cause of the housing emergency. But the housing emergency is also fuelled by injustice and discrimination.

Housing rights are under threat. Whether it’s because of public bodies failing to meet their legal duties, others breaching existing rights or exploiting power imbalances, or the systemic racism and discrimination in housing.

The effects of inadequate protections and poor practices are felt beyond the housing sector, across health, education, care and justice.

We can protect more people immediately by improving housing rights, through legislation, strategic litigation and by supporting people to enforce their existing rights.

Shelter staff fight every day for housing justice, equipping people with knowledge they need to enforce their rights. This is not just a service; it is a radical act of solidarity, an activist response to the indifference, violence and neglect perpetrated by a broken and biased housing system.

With each person we support, we can help to strengthen housing rights for everyone:

• By changing culture and practice – of landlords and local authorities

• By establishing precedent

• By generating data and insight into the housing emergency that informs our campaigns and services. 

Shelter will continue seeking to strengthen and enforce the right to a safe home for all.

In 2025-29 we want to:

• Support individuals and communities with the knowledge and skills to advocate for their housing rights and for housing justice

• Understand, call out and challenge the systemic racism and discrimination at the heart of the housing emergency

• Challenge those who breach existing rights and exploit power imbalances

• Challenge public sector bodies who are failing to meet their legal duties

• Secure improvements in housing rights and protections for all.

Ways we’ll deliver this include:

• Continuing to provide the essential advice and advocacy services to the people most affected by the housing emergency, across Community Services, Legal, Telephone & Online Advice

• Continuing to equip people with housing rights knowledge through our website

• Working both nationally and in communities to identify local priorities and systemic causes of housing injustice

• Developing local community organising and service delivery plans linked and targeted to local and national priorities

• Campaigning for greater protections for renters through the Renters’ Rights Bill

• Researching to understand the impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill

• Implementing our ‘Racism & Housing: Access to Services’ recommendations

• Continuing to develop a long-term location / presence plan

• Strategic litigation, using the law to enhance or improve enforcement of existing rights

• Developing professional practice through targeted professional services.

Build a coalition to secure long-term change

The last six years have shown us that progress towards housing justice is fragile and easily undermined. The changes we campaign on require political will to enact them. Achieving our goals will take more than what Shelter alone can do.

We need to continue to build a coalition of individuals, groups and organisations who will work in solidarity with those affected by the housing emergency. We must continue to focus on anti-racism and put lived experience at the heart of our work.

Whether they are engaged in direct action, supporting our campaigns, donating time or money, this coalition will help us deliver our goals and ensure they are sustainable.

We need to create opportunities for individuals and organisations to act, motivating and galvanising them to take action that will help us end the housing emergency. We need to show that a better system, with human dignity at its centre, is possible.

We need to build the critical mass of public support that will force the government to act – and which no government could stand against in future.

Shelter is uniquely positioned to build and activate a broad coalition of supporters - from clients, customers and campaigners to partners and sponsors - to take action to help end the housing emergency. 

Shelter will build a coalition to secure long-term change, with lived-experience and anti-racism at its heart.

In 2025-29, we will:

• Unite people affected by the housing emergency and their allies to fight for home

• Provide individuals, groups and organisations with clear actions that help to achieve the changes they want to see

• Embed expertise by experience and anti-racism at all levels of Shelter.

Ways we’ll deliver that include:

• Community organising and capacity building

• Corporate partner campaign actions and increasing engagement of corporate colleagues in our campaigning

• Mobilising communities in support of social home building

• Developing our supporter stewardship to a true, single supporter approach, using all touchpoints – with clients, campaigns, donors and supporters - to engage people to take action to help end the housing emergency.

By 2029

• The government has committed long-term investment towards a new generation of social homes and delivery is underway

• Housing rights and protections have improved for all tenants

• More people are confident in the knowledge and enforcement of their housing rights

• The symptoms and causes of housing system dysfunction are well understood by the public

• There is a broad coalition of voices advocating for our solutions.

Beyond 2029

• 90,000 social homes delivered per year for ten years

• Numbers of households who are homeless or in temporary accommodation is falling year on year

• More people can choose a social home

• Housing rights are routinely enforced without intervention

• Systemic racism and discrimination in housing is reducing, and racist and discriminatory policies have ended

• Future governments continue to commit to protecting and improving social housing provision.