You’re Home – Unlocking housing solutions through social investment
East Belfast Mission recently hosted a roundtable with sector peers, drawing on the You’re Home pilot, in partnership with Commonweal, to raise the profile of socially financed housing interventions across Northern Ireland's homelessness prevention sector.
EBM colleagues outlined the project's value in leveraging social investment (sourced by Commonweal) to secure a £2 million Financial Transactions Capital (FTC) loan from the Government to expand their community housing stock.
Project overview
Since commencing in 2023, You’re Home has provided affordable accommodation for individuals recovering from homelessness in Belfast. The pilot sits within EBM’s wider services, acting as a pathway to independent housing for those ready to move on from its Hosford Hostel. Upon moving into their home, residents can access wraparound support services.
Commonweal facilitated You're Home by providing £570,886 of social investment, enabling the acquisition of the pilot's five Belfast-based properties and covering renovation costs and technical surveying support.
The project's independent evaluation found that You're Home is producing positive experiences for residents across wellbeing, employment and family life, and facilitating genuine recovery from homelessness. The cost-benefit analysis estimates a £2.39 social return for every £1 invested, demonstrating significant social and economic value, as well as financial returns for investors.
Case study: A service user who moved into a You're Home property from the Hosford Hostel after a period of incarceration recently progressed into his own social home. With support from Hosford spanning financial advice, practical help, and counselling, he secured full-time employment while maintaining a relationship with his three children.
Social investment to FTC & sector learnings
Beyond direct impact on tenants, the You’re Home pilot enabled EBM to leverage this investment to expand its community-led housing provision.
The project served as a proof of concept for EBM to secure a £2m FTC loan through the Department for Communities Loan to Acquire Move-on Accommodation (LAMA) to purchase around 18 additional You’re Home units.
During the session, EBM emphasised the positive impact of the FTC investment on the organisation's ability to provide more homes – demonstrating the wider potential of community-led housing to tackle homelessness. This will allow considerably more move-on from their hostel, enabling more rough sleepers to get off the streets. From an initial Commonweal partnership, EBM have used social financing to improve the capacity of Belfast’s homelessness response quite significantly.
EBM also highlighted implications and proposed solutions to improve the process. A key challenge to securing FTC is the requirement of a 20% deposit (a considerable sum for applicants to find), which often delays schemes and creates competition across the sector for the same funding pots. To mitigate this, suggested alternatives include establishing a single financial brokerage service that better connects supply (investors) and demand; reducing the deposit to 10% or eliminating it; or offering a much lower interest rate (1%) over a longer repayment term.
Other implications include the need for organisations to have technical expertise (outside of front-line service delivery) in areas such as business planning, finance, surveying and property evaluation. Broader challenges also include rising house prices and access to good-quality stock, as well as the financial burden of ongoing operating costs.
To address these, EBM outlined key lessons to support replication:
Technical assistance is vital at both project and organisational level. In the case of You’re Home, EBM attribute Commonweal's technical support to building substantial in-house knowledge of property acquisition, refit, and housing management.
Investment readiness training is necessary across the third sector, particularly for organisations with less experience of debt finance and income generation.
Recurrent costs must be factored into any loan deal, including change-of-tenancy costs, refurbishments and maintenance, emphasising the need for contingency financial planning.
Brokerage is essential to bring together a mix of experts tailored to specific projects. The Community Academy (a capacity-building programme) is identified as a successful subsidised support model for projects in the Northern Ireland Executive's Urban Villages programme.
Organisations in Northern Ireland interested in learning how social finance can unlock housing interventions can read a write-up of the discussion here.
For further details, read the evaluation of the You’re Home model below.
