Empowered Living

In December 2014, The Independent and Evening Standard ran their most successful campaign, raising £1.3m for ex-servicemen and women. Homeless and Veteran charities used these donations to complete the building of a new Veterans’ shelter. 

Homeless Heroes Aid main objective is to build various Veterans’ shelters across England. The first part of this extensive project involves sourcing neglected old council buildings, which will be renovated and turned into self-contained flats with enough room for a minimum of 6 veterans. These self-contained flats will act as a “move on” property for Veterans who are preparing to leave homeless shelters and embrace supported living arrangements. 

We are seeking volunteers to help us refurbish our first Homeless Heroes Aid Shelter and this shelter will be maintained and run by Veterans who are ready for independent living arrangements. The shelter is equipped to prepare Veterans for sustainable, independent living and will be a hybrid between social housing and the private rented sector. Our aim is to create a more positive shared housing model, where Veterans share self-contained flats as a way of making accommodation affordable, as well as providing company and mutual support for each other. The key element to this model is that Veterans receive constant emotional and physical support to remain in work and that accommodation is affordable enough for each Veteran to manage without falling prey to homelessness again. Each Veteran will also take on a majority of the Shelter management and work to their own timetable rather than an arbitrary one set by local authority commissioners. Our success will be in reflecting a more mainstream experience of shared housing. 

When the renovation project is complete, each bedroom will be furnished and decorated to a high standard as the ageing building is brought into the 21st century. Volunteers from ethical companies will be drafted in to help with the renovation work, thus saving on labour costs. 

Homeless Heroes Aid goal is to work on this project to enable us to build on what other homeless Veteran charities have accomplished without over-stretching ourselves financially or diverting funds needed for delivery of our ongoing core campaigns that help homeless Veterans. 

Sadly, there have been homeless veterans since war-fighting began many decades ago; but what is currently disturbing is an increase in the number of homeless Veterans, year in, year out. Many are struggling with largely societal problems. The ex-servicemen and women who seek our help are homeless, hungry, dealing with addictions, alcoholism and social isolation. Our aim at Homeless Heroes Aid is to build world-class facilities that help our ex-service men and women out of hard times and ensure that they receive the training, counselling and help they need to get firmly back on the right path to independent living. 

The public should never forget the sacrifices that were made by our ex-servicemen and women.