Shelter

Shelter is the national housing and homelessness charity for England and Scotland. We are here so that no one has to face bad housing or homelessness alone. Each year, our work helps more than 6.9 million people through the provision of advice, support, information and advocacy, all of which is built around reaching people earlier and preventing people from becoming homeless.  

Our national helpline and 16 regional Community Hubs – four in Scotland and 12 in England – offer specialist advice on housing, money, debt and welfare benefits. We also offer legal advice and representation.

We tackle the root causes of bad housing by campaigning government and local councils for new laws and policies, and more investment to improve the lives of homeless and badly housed people. 

Shelter started in 1966 in response to the housing crisis which saw millions of people living in slum conditions with no legal protection. The founding vision – was to establish one organisation to speak for the millions of ‘hidden homeless’. Our aims were simple. To raise money so that families in need could be re-housed. And to raise public awareness of homelessness and appalling housing conditions. 

Shelter started to achieve real political success in the 1960s and had a major win when the Housing Act was passed in 1974 providing housing associations with full government funding. 

As a result, our resources were freed up for campaigning on other important issues, such as the rights of private tenants. Over the years we have made significant achievements such as winning a strategic case that made it illegal for estate agents to discriminate against tenants who are dependent on housing benefits to pay their rent. More recently, we also doubled the capacity of our national Helpline to meet the increased demand in the face of the COVID pandemic.