Dreams, the UK’s leading specialist bed retailer, has announced a three-year partnership with the leading housing and homelessness charity Shelter, to raise vital funds and awareness to address the housing emergency.
Dreams has committed to paying £150,000 to help fund Shelter’s essential work, with the overall ambition to raise much more than this together with colleagues, customers, and communities, over the course of the partnership. This money will support Shelter’s vital services, including its emergency helpline which gets nearly a thousand calls each day from people experiencing or at risk of some form of homelessness, including families stuck in temporary accommodation.
Across Britain, 17.5 million people are impacted by the housing emergency, living in homes that are unfit, unstable, or unaffordable, or where they have experienced discrimination. In England alone, 271,000 people are officially recorded as homeless, living in temporary accommodations, homeless hostels or forced to sleep rough
Temporary accommodation is housing provided by the council when a person or household becomes homeless. It can take the form of emergency hostels and B&B rooms, one-room bedsits, and cramped flats, where families are often forced to share beds.
It is not designed for permanent living, but the lack of safe, secure, and affordable homes means families are often trapped there for long periods. There are 95,000 households in England currently living in temporary accommodation, and more than two-thirds (68%) of homeless families in England have been living in temporary accommodation for over a year.
‘At Dreams, we know the importance of having a safe and secure place to sleep and live. Without the foundations of a home, it’s impossible for people and communities to be the best they can be’ said Jonathan Hirst, Dreams’ CEO. ‘Yet millions of people face that reality every day. We’re proud to be partnering with Shelter to help change that, and to make sure everyone can have the right to a safe home.’
‘As the housing emergency deepens, our work has never been more critical. The lack of genuinely affordable social homes and rising rents, on top of the current cost of living crisis, threatens to tip even more people into homelessness’ added Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Shelter.
‘Our frontline advisers work tirelessly to help people in desperate situations, whether it’s a homeless family sharing one room in an emergency B&B or the person terrified of another night on the streets with just a tent to call home. Our partnership with Dreams will help us in our fight to make sure everyone has access to a safe and secure home, with a warm bed of their own.’
Further information about the partnership can be found here.
Featured image: Dreams start at home / dreams.co.uk
