Who is Shelter?
Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home.
Find out more
What we do
Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home. Every year, we help those who are struggling with unsafe and unfit housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. We campaign to make sure that, one day, the right to a safe home exists for everyone. Because home is everything.
Campaigning for housing justice
Shelter was formed in 1966 in response to the country’s massive housing crisis. Shelter’s founders wanted to establish an organisation that stood up for the millions of ‘hidden homeless’ living in overcrowded slums. They understood homelessness as more than just people sleeping on the streets. They recognised that it included people living without a permanent home, and those living in poor conditions and precarious situations because of insecure tenancies or unaffordability.
Today, the housing emergency affects 17.5 million people who are denied a safe and stable home. That includes thousands sleeping on the streets on any given night and over a quarter of a million people stuck in temporary accommodation. It also encompasses millions more living in overcrowded, dangerous, unfit or unaffordable homes.
The housing system is broken. Successive governments have failed to provide the good quality and stable social housing people need, leaving millions shut out and struggling to find a secure home. People are crammed into unsafe homes – places riddled with mould or damp that makes them sick. Private renting lacks regulation, leaving renters facing insecurity, living with the threat of unfair evictions and unsustainably high rents. And when people do struggle, our welfare system is too weak to support them.
We therefore:
work in communities to understand the problem and change the system. And we run national campaigns to fight for change at the top. Read about our campaigns.
carry out ground-breaking research to understand the UK’s housing problems and develop policies to solve them. Read about our policy and research.
work with the media to make sure the voices of those affected by the housing emergency are heard. Visit our media .
Our impact
Our community-based teams continue to work with individuals, through face-to-face services, helplines and online. Through that work we gain an understanding of the complexities and systemic inequalities at the heart of the housing emergency. This makes us well placed to link lived experience, community voices and frontline knowledge with our national campaigns, drawing on evidence, insights and ideas from the people we are here to serve.
While our ultimate goal is to increase the supply of social housing as the solution to the housing emergency, our community-based teams continue to work to challenge the unfair, discriminatory and broken housing systems that prevent the delivery of, and access to, homes.
| In the last year, we helped over 20,000 households through our emergency helplines (15,975 in England and 4,259 in Scotland). Of those calls: | England | Scotland |
|---|---|---|
| Those who were homeless or at risk of homelessness | 55% | 32% |
| Those who were in the private rented sector | 42% | 38% |
| Those who wanted to keep their current home | 27% | 23% |
| Those who needed temporary accommodation | 27% | 18% |
| Those who were seeking to improve their circumstances by leaving their current home | 12% | 11% |
| Those who were female | 57% | 56% |
| Those who had dependants | 32% | 30% |
From the beginning of April 2023 to the end of March 2024:
7.1 million visits were made to our online advice and service pages
25,902 conversations were had on our webchat service (15,577 in England and 10,325 in Scotland)
5,020 households across England and Scotland were supported by our teams of lawyers, legal advisers and support staff
13,469 households were helped by our community-based teams
16,293 queries were responded to by our professional advice services (12,203 in England and 1,266 in Scotland)
3,654 people in custody and in the community were supported by Justice Services
Our strategy
Our 10-year organisational strategy ‘The Right to a Safe Home’ was launched in 2019 following the largest consultation in Shelter’s history. The strategy recognised that the ‘housing crisis’ had intensified to the point where it had become an emergency, and that the response to the housing emergency required systemic change at a local, regional and national level.
That strategy has three themes:
Social housing
Based on our own research we know that the lack of social housing is the single biggest factor in the housing emergency. Delivering more social housing is therefore the only solution.
Housing rights
Social housing is the long-term solution, but housing rights are under immediate threat. The balance of power between landlords and tenants creates opportunities for abuse and exploitation, discrimination is widespread, and local authorities are regularly unable to meet their legal duties.
People powered change
We know we cannot fix the housing emergency alone – it requires political commitment, which ultimately comes from public demand. We need to build a ‘movement for change’ calling for an end to the housing emergency.
The strategy period
The final period of the current strategy is 2025-29, and it presents an opportunity to build on the successes of the last six years to start ending the housing emergency. The strategic levers we will look to employ include ensuring that government and decision makers prioritise the building of a new generation of social homes, that housing rights are enshrined and enforced, and the public are aware of their rights.