There are almost a quarter of a million women and girls living in privately rented housing in Wales. Women face different pressures from men when they’re renting: whether it’s finding a home that’s suitable, finding a landlord who seems trustworthy, or negotiating a tenancy contract that meets the household’s needs. Women are more likely than […]
In the last ten years more than 5,200 households in Wales have been deemed to have intentionally caused their own homelessness. These decisions can have a devastating effect on people and particularly children. The Welsh Government, recognising this, has set a target for Welsh councils to end intentionality decisions for all households with children by […]
This week an Assembly committee called for the Welsh Government to make some radical changes to how street homeless people are helped. One of the most significant recommendations was that Welsh Government should establish a timetable for abolition of the ‘priority need’ test. Shelter Cymru has been calling for an end to priority need for […]
It’s one year since we launched our report Accessing and sustaining social tenancies which asked whether some people in Wales were being deemed ‘too poor’ for social housing. The report focussed on the use of financial assessments in the pre-tenancy stages and found evidence that some landlords were using these to deny people tenancies on […]
Last week the Welsh Government published a rather important set of statistics on homelessness. The figures mean that for the first time we can get a sense what’s been happening in Welsh homelessness over the last two years since the law was changed to increase prevention work and help more people. And the picture that’s […]
For many people in Wales, what happened at Grenfell Tower brought back painful memories of Aberfan half a century ago. Both tragedies involved safety failures leading to the deaths of many children and adults. Both involved working class communities who were completely ignored when they tried to warn that their lives were being put at […]
There’s an aspect of Welsh homelessness legislation that we’ve always been deeply uncomfortable with. When the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 gave new powers to local authorities to discharge their homelessness duties if they decided that a household is ‘unreasonably failing to cooperate’, we and others predicted it would lead to highly vulnerable people being excluded […]
The latest rough sleeper figures for Wales are a shocking confirmation of what many of us have suspected for some time now. Anyone walking the streets of our cities and towns can’t fail to notice how many people are bedding down in the open air, even on the coldest nights of the year. Everyone is […]
How many people in Wales today live in homes that give them what they need to live, rather than just get by? When Shelter developed the Living Home Standard, in partnership with British Gas and Ipsos MORI, the aim was to establish a measure that was grounded firmly in what people believe a home needs […]
When Nerys’ abusive ex-partner was imprisoned, she and her son moved into a housing association tenancy with the hope of starting a new life. She had been nearly killed in a brutal attack that had left her with mental and physical health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, which meant that, for the first time in […]
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