The charity made the announcement as it suggested the UK has not “seen homelessness numbers this bad in living memory”
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Leading UK homelessness charity Crisis has announced it’s set to become a landlord in an attempt to counter the ‘catastrophic’ UK housing market.
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The charity announced its plan to buy rental properties on Monday, admitting it can “no longer rely on access to social housing”.
The groundbreaking move marks the biggest shift in its approach to tackling the issue in nearly 60-years, with the charity admitting the UK rental market has reached a “catastrophic scenario”.
Newly-released figures provided by the charity suggest 300,000 people in England are currently facing the worst kind of homelessness – including sleeping on the streets, tents and in unsuitable hotels accomodation.
Led by Heriot-Watt University, the study revealed that 299,100 households in England experienced acute homelessness in 2024 – marking an increase of 21% since 2022 and 45% since 2012.
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According to the charity, it has already set up its own lettings agency in a bid to secure access to private rented housing.
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Speaking with The Guardian, Matt Downie, the charity’s chief executive, revealed the fresh approach to tackling rental issues following a severe lack of social housing.
Revealing the charity is preparing to launch a fundraising campaign to buy its own housing stock, Mr Downie suggesting its an uphill battle attempting to help the homeless using government housing stock.
“We don’t want to do this, but if nobody else is going to provide housing, we’ll do it ourselves,” he said.
“It’s something that would have been inconceivable for my predecessors 10, 30, 50 years ago, because people would have expected both councils and housing associations to provide the stock needed for people on low incomes. It’s just no longer available.
“We wouldn’t be doing this unless the wheels had come off the homelessness and housing system.”
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The charity will aim to secure the housing for high-needs individuals and families, offering bespoke support, starting in London and Newcastle.
Downie said the country had not “seen homelessness numbers this bad in living memory but we’ve also never had better evidence on what to do about it”.
“Nobody needs persuading that we’re in a catastrophic scenario,” he added.
“When I started working in homelessness, the average age of death [for a homeless male] was 47. It’s now gone down to 44. We’ve started to see the first cases of children on our streets. That doesn’t seem to shock people enough.
“We will proudly go about acquiring and providing our own homes, mainstream housing, because that’s the answer. We won’t get anywhere without the housing,” he continued.
“Our strategy is to get to at least a thousand homes in the first phase, and we’ve got Housing First tenancy support teams in those two cities ready to go to support people.
“But the ambition is to move to something even bigger so that we can demonstrate that the solution to homelessness is housing.”
It comes days after housing secretary Steve Reed suggested Andrew Mountbatten Windsor should go before US Congress to give evidence about his relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The minister said it woud be up to the former prince whether he attended, but said anyone who can help with investigations should try to “make themselves available”.
Democratic members of the House oversight committee, which investigates scandals and standards in the federal government, wrote a letter to Andrew on Thursday.
The letter summoned him to testify over his connections with Epstein, although is not legally binding as Andrew is not a US citizen.