£3 million available to help charities fight rough sleeping

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Communities and also in Housing

A £3m fund has been made available to tackle the rising levels of rough sleeping.

English homeless charities are now able to apply for grants of up to £200,000 from the Homelessness Transition Fund.

With the number of people sleeping out on any one night estimated to have increased by 23% last year, priority will be given to areas that are experiencing high levels of homelessness and want to adopt No Second Night Out.

No Second Night Out puts services in place to ensure that new rough sleepers get rapid help so they don’t spend a second night on the streets. The idea, pioneered in London, has already spread to 30 areas thanks to funding from the £20m Homelessness Transition Fund.

Commenting, Sharon Allen, Chair of the Fund’s Grants Panel said: “With last week’s Government figures showing that homelessness continues to rise, it’s more important than ever that we prevent people from ending up on our streets.

“We want to help communities that have been hardest hit by homelessness. If you’re a charity which has a new idea when it comes to tackling rough sleeping or you want to join the growing number of areas to adopt No Second Night Out, we want to hear from you.”

The independent Homelessness Transition Fund was set up in 2011 to help support the Government’s rough sleeping strategy ‘Vision to end rough sleeping: No Second Night Out nationwide’.

Administered by Homeless Link, the umbrella body for homelessness charities, and supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Fund has given out 62 grants worth £11.6m since it first launched in 2011.