Rahim’s Letter 019: Fresh Start Fund - An Idea To End Homelessness In The UK

Give homeless people a Fresh Start - give them what they need to support themselves for six months, giving them the short-term security to get them a long-term place to live.

It’s outrageous that homelessness is still a problem in 21st Century Britain. 

For a nation that has for centuries sat on the leaderboard of the world’s most prosperous countries, I struggle to understand how we, as a society, continue to accept that some people in our society have nowhere to live. 

So many of us feel helpless when we walk past a homeless person on the street and these people are ignored all day, everyday. The bulk of homelessness in this country isn’t actually those we see on the streets, but those who are in temporary accommodation but have no long-term place to live - think those who are sleeping on a mate’s sofa for example. 

Half of these are children. 

The vast majority of the homeless are only in that position because they were hit by a series of unfortunate incidents that all happened at the wrong time and crescendoed into them losing their home. Some also struggle with addiction or mental health problems. 

And once they’re homeless, trying to change that is a bit like trying to climb out of a seven foot pit. You might struggle for work, or to get access to your bank accounts. In any case, you don’t have a permanent address, and so you can’t open a new one either. HSBC ran a great campaign (which you can see here) on the doom loop a lot of homeless people find themselves in, and with credit to them, they have built a support system that helps break that loop. 

That might mean you struggle to get a job, or you struggle to keep a job because you’re not sleeping well because you’re on the street or you’re unkempt because you don’t have reliable access to places where you can wash. 

I strongly believe that a Fresh Start would give homeless people the lifeline and security they need to lift themselves out of their situation and build a sustainable, new life for themselves. That’s where the (idea for a) Fresh Start Fund comes in. 

Imagine if we could give people the support they needed to help themselves for say, 6 months. 

Imagine if we could give them somewhere nice to live, somewhere that’s theirs for 6 months. 

Imagine we gave them enough money to feed and clothes themselves and make sure they didn’t need to worry about necessities. 

Picture a world where we set them up with support that helps them get into, and stay in, employment. 

A world that helps them with any long term issues they had and gets them well on the way to recovery. 

A world where they’re not ignored and have a dedicated person they can talk to and get support from. 

Crudely, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that you could spend £1,200/month on accommodation for them (£7,200 over 6 months) and say £60 a week on sustenance i.e., food and clothing  (£1,560 total), and then work with other charities and agencies to help them get the other support they need. 

That’s a total of £8,760. 

For under £10,000, you could give someone the opportunity to have a fresh start. You could change someone’s life. The ripple effects could do anything. You’d be changing the world. 

We’d call it the Fresh Start Fund. It would be entirely concessionary i.e., it’s not making a financial return, it’s giving all the money away. 

It would aim to end homelessness in the UK. Once we’ve done that, we’d continue to exist (albeit in a smaller format) to capture those who become at risk of homelessness and stop it becoming a thing again. 

Our children would grow up in a world where no one has to sleep on the street. 

We’d change the world. 

What do you think? If you’ve got this far, please hit reply, type the first thing that comes to mind, and press send. 

RH

Sent from my iPad