Commonweal Launches Housing Helps Competition

We are launching our ‘Housing Helps’ new ideas competition to award £10k for the most innovative housing solution to combat a social injustice.

Housing Helps will award £10,000 to fund a feasibility study into an area of social injustice, where the applicant feels housing could be part of the solution.

This competition follows the success of our ‘Starter for 10’ competition, which was won by London-based homelessness charity Thames Reach and their application for further research into a housing solution for migrant workers living in tent encampments.

Working with and supported by Commonweal, Thames Reach, alongside other partners were able to research and develop wooden pods to give homeless shelters the option of offering greater privacy and security to individuals.

Catherine Parsons, Director of Operations at Thames Reach, said: “Winning Commonweal’s competition enabled us to better understand the needs of a very misunderstood group and it would have been difficult for us to secure funding elsewhere for this research.

“Aside from the money, Commonweal provided us with ongoing support and challenge through the research and helped us disseminate the findings, all of which has been invaluable in enabling us to develop some possible solutions to this particular social need.”

In addition to providing support for 2016’s winner, we also took forward a number of other ideas from the applications including research relating to rough sleeping couples, in partnership with Brighton Women’s Centre and Homeless Link.

The Housing Helps competition is open to any charity, research body or organisation with an interest in a social injustice that they believe to have been under researched or where there is something new to be examined about a particular injustice or solution.

Ashley Horsey, Chief Executive at Commonweal Housing said: “Our Housing Helps competition is aimed at encouraging innovation and creativity in using housing as a solution to solving social injustices. It doesn’t matter what the social injustice is, what is key is that the solution is innovative and housing focused.

“Our last competition received a lot of interest with entries from across the country and some incredibly interesting proposals so we’re looking forward to seeing what Housing Helps will deliver.”