2025: How we campaigned for a future free from homelessness

At every critical moment, you showed up – signing open letters, writing to MPs, and taking action for a future free from homelessness. 

Your actions have never been needed more than now. More than 300,000 families and individuals across England are experiencing the worst forms of homelessness. 

Our mission is to build a Britain where that doesn’t happen. With your support, we’ll be here for as long as it takes.

A future free from homelessness

We kicked off 2025 with a bold call to the UK Government: deliver on your promise of a plan to end homelessness.

Together, we pushed for a plan that would build social homes, fix our support systems and prevent homelessness before it starts. More than 20,000 of you signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, which we delivered straight to the heart of power: 10 Downing Street.

Their plan was finally published in December 2025. It’s a big step forward, but there is still much more to be done.

Thanks to your campaigning, it includes stronger measures to prevent homelessness and a clearer ambition to tackle all forms of homelessness. But it still falls short of what’s needed to end homelessness.

There’s too little to help people on the lowest incomes afford their rent – like unfreezing housing benefit. And the chronic shortage of social and affordable homes is not changing quickly enough.

That’s why we’ll keep campaigning, for as long as it takes.

A big moment for social homes

Ahead of the Spending Review in June, you helped amplify shocking new research we produced with the National Housing Federation and Shelter. We found that in some places in England, people face an unacceptable 100‑year wait for a social home.

Together, we called for the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to invest in a new generation of social homes – and it worked. The government committed £39 billion across ten years.

Now we’re working on ensuring this money is turned into homes for social rent as quickly as possible.

Preventing homelessness

Pressures like job loss, ill health or rising rents shouldn’t push any of us into homelessness. Yet too often, the systems that are meant to prevent it just don’t work. Fixing this was a key demand of our ‘Future Free From Homelessness’ campaign.

You shared with the Housing Secretary the stories of Magdalena, Petros and Abel, all of whom lost their homes when key opportunities to prevent their homelessness were missed.

Your pressure helped unlock a major shift. The UK Government will introduce a new duty to collaborate, in England which means public services will have to work together to prevent homelessness.

The number of people becoming homeless after leaving hospital or prison has risen by 22% in the last year. Fixing this could help quickly reduce homelessness in England. 

Local Housing Allowance

This year, we took on a tough fight: ending the freeze on Local Housing Allowance. Also known as housing benefit, LHA helps people on low incomes pay their rent.

Multiple freezes in the past few years means it’s fallen way behind the real cost of rent, driving people deeper into poverty and towards homelessness.

Thousands of you wrote to your MPs, leading to MPs attending our LHA event in Parliament and asking dozens of parliamentary questions. More than 12,000 people wrote directly to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

We campaigned in Parliament Square, joined forces with other organisations and splashed our research in the media. But this time, it wasn’t enough. The freeze remains in force. And that’s deeply disappointing.

However, you helped us build one of the strongest campaigns on housing benefit we’ve ever mounted. We stood up for what’s right – and that matters.

The end of the Vagrancy Act

The Vagrancy Act should have been history long ago. Since 1824, it has punished people simply for being forced to sleep rough.

Thanks to thousands of your actions, MPs voted to repeal the Act back in 2022. But it was never fully enacted, meaning people could still be fined or arrested for not having a safe home.

But together, we told this UK Government that no one should be punished simply for not having a safe home.

And they listened! The Government confirmed they would fully repeal the Act in 2026, ending more than 200 years of treating homelessness as a crime.

It’s proof that your campaigning works, and that we’ll never give up fighting for change.

None of this would have happened without you. When we come together, we’re powerful. And we make change happen.

Help us be there for as long as it takes to end homelessness, in 2026 and beyond

Donate today to help build a future free from homelessness.

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