Crisis is one of the UK’s leading homelessness charities. Founded in 1967, it has since grown into an organisation that helps thousands of people experiencing homelessness every year with finding homes, acquiring new skills, receiving healthcare and other support they need. It regularly campaigns for changes to end homelessness in Great Britain – something it believes can happen with the right public and political support. Here are some interesting facts you didn’t know about the charity.
1 Crisis was formed in the aftermath of a Ken Loach drama
The 1966 TV play Cathy Come Home, directed by Ken Loach, was a heart-rending account of a young mother, Cathy, sucked into a distressing chain of events after her husband loses his job, eventually culminating in Cathy losing custody of her children and ending up on the streets.
More than a quarter of the UK population watched the drama and were understandably shocked – the BBC switchboard even crashed due to viewers asking to help. Galvanised by this public outrage, aspiring politician Bill Shearman started a publicity campaign, which resulted in the creation of Crisis months later.
2 Ed Sheeran wrote The A Team after volunteering at Crisis
The A Team was Ed Sheeran’s breakthrough hit, a ballad about a sex worker experiencing problems with drugs. The song was written after Sheeran met a guest while volunteering at one of Crisis’s Christmas services.
Other Crisis celebrity supporters include Coldplay, Sir Ian McKellen (who often volunteers at the Crisis Christmas centres on Boxing Day), Anthony Joshua (he’s taught a boxing lesson at a Crisis centre at Christmas), Dina Asher-Smith, Richard Gere, Jo Brand and Jeremy Paxman (who has hosted philosophy workshops for Crisis clients) to name a few.
3 Crisis has been campaigning since the 1960s and is still going
Since the 1960s, Crisis has spearheaded campaigns that have led to changes in legislation, plus radically altered the way governments and the public think about homelessness. Its No One Turned Away campaign in 2011 led to the Homelessness Reduction Act being introduced – which resulted in the government announcing £20m of funding to tackle homelessness. Meanwhile, Crisis’s work with the UK parliament has resulted in the Domestic Abuse Act being modified so anybody made homeless due to domestic abuse in England has a legal right to housing.
Current Crisis campaigns include Regulate the Rogues (a bid to stop dodgy landlords) and Scrap the Vagrancy Act (the 1824 Vagrancy Act criminalises people for sleeping rough and begging). Meanwhile, during a time when the cost of living crisis has resulted in many tenants facing eviction due to their income not being enough to pay for rapidly rising rents (according to data from the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK have risen by 3.6% in the 12 months to September 2022), Crisis has been calling on the government to unfreeze housing benefits, giving both tenants and landlords greater financial security.
4 Crisis needs volunteers who are hairdressers, legal advisers, singing coaches
Every Christmas, qualified hairdressers, masseurs and nail technicians offer their services to guests at Crisis Christmas centres. If you’re a legal adviser, counsellor, van driver, yoga instructor, blogging expert, interpreter fluent in languages such as Polish or Farsi, or somebody who can teach painting, IT or singing, your skills are in demand.
5 Crisis conducts crucial research into homelessness
The studies and surveys carried out by Crisis have drawn stark attention to often ignored issues that face people experiencing homelessness. Research by Crisis shows that being employed is no guarantee of escaping homelessness, as more than one in five households facing homelessness are in work, while other research by the charity shows that 227,000 families and individuals across Britain are currently experiencing homelessness.
6 Crisis reminds us that ending homelessness is about fixing policies – not people
Over the past decade, high housing costs have plunged many people into homelessness. Spiralling rents, soaring energy and food costs, and record levels of inflation are all reasons that could put more people into homelessness. The government can make a difference by tackling these issues – which will in turn help decrease the number of people experiencing homelessness.
7 The charity draws attention to how the climate crisis impacts people who are homeless
As the climate crisis continues to cause havoc, the UK’s homeless population are often those most likely to bear the brunt of it. The flash floods of 2021 washed away the tents of many rough sleepers, while this year’s record heatwave saw many families in temporary housing struggle to stay cool. Crisis believes the government can help minimise the problem by putting emergency measures in place for rough sleepers that reflect all extreme weather events.
8 Crisis is helping to improve the health of thousands of people who are homeless
Crisis regularly ensures that people experiencing homelessness are given health checks, as well as visits from dentists, opticians and chiropodists. With eight out of 10 people sleeping rough having been diagnosed with mental health issues (mental illness can often be the reason why somebody is forced into rough sleeping, while the stresses of homelessness can also aggravate or cause mental health conditions), Crisis also deploys psychologists and psychotherapists.
9 This Christmas, Crisis is asking us to donate £29.07
It might seem like an arbitrary number, but precise pricing has long been a cornerstone of Crisis appeals. The £29.07 figure is calculated by looking at the overall expenditure of Crisis at Christmas, including the cost of providing hotel accommodation across London to people who would otherwise be sleeping rough and the cost of the Christmas case management team, who provide one-to-one support to people accessing Crisis’s services. This is then divided by the number of people the charity estimates it will help per day over the Christmas period.
10 Crisis strongly believes that homelessness will be eliminated within our lifetimes
Homelessness might be on the rise (4,900 people have been evicted by landlords from April to June this year, which is an increase of 29% on the previous quarter), but a key part of Crisis’s philosophy is that the problem can be solved with collective and political action. In 2018, Crisis published its landmark Everybody In campaign, where it outlined achievable recommendations to extinguish homelessness within a decade, including building 100,500 social homes every year for the next 15 years, reforming housing benefits, and employing homelessness specialists at job centres. As part of the plan to end homelessness, Crisis asked PwC to estimate the costs and benefits of measures to tackle homelessness through a range of targeted interventions, including housing-related support. The PwC analysis found that over 10 years, interventions costing £9.9bn would deliver benefits worth £26.4bn.
If you’re interested in ending homelessness by volunteering, campaigning, fundraising or making a donation to Crisis, and want to find out more, visit crisis.org.uk
