Homeless Rooms Birmingham
Donation protected
Hi everyone,
We need a bit of help to revolutionise homelessness in Birmingham. We want to create Rightmove for Homeless People & Sofa Surfers.
We've been working on this idea for the last 4 months.
We've met and spoken to literally hundreds of people and the overwhelming majority of the people we've connected with think it's a great idea too.
We are not naive, we don't think this will 'solve' homelessness as the issue is very very complex. However, we believe (and we've been told by major players in the sector) that www.HomelessRoomsBirmingham.co.uk has the potential to make a major dent in Homelessness locally.
It's a major problem that has become so prevalent in our great city. Like many people we believe that we live in such a rich country that really, no one should be homeless.
The idea of this site is pretty simple: There are dozens of homeless people in Birmingham sleeping rough TONIGHT and 5000-20000 more people are ‘sofa surfing’ with no place to call their own.
Birmingham City council receive over 100 homeless applications each week.
There are 1800 people in temporary accommodation and 350 people in Bed & Breakfasts which costs the council a lot of money... Millions of pounds every year.
Not many people know this, but in Birmingham there are dozens of landlords who own hundreds of properties with thousands of rooms who accept homeless people without the need for:
*Deposits
*Fees
*or Extortionate rents
Our research suggests there are in fact over 5000 such rooms available in Birmingham. At any one time the void rates (empty rooms) for these properties are on average between 10-20%. Therefore a quick calculation tells us that there are between [phone redacted] rooms that are available to homeless people TONIGHT that are currently EMPTY.
So this site will match empty rooms in supported accommodation flats and houses to homeless people and sofa surfers who need rooms.
NO BRAINER RIGHT?
Homeless Rooms aims to make sure that homeless people get a room and the support they need to move on in life.
At the moment the site is in BETA testing..
We have had quite a few discussions with various people at Birmingham City Council and they have been really supportive, suggesting ways that we can improve the site, improve standards of support and better safeguard new and existing tenants.
They have even suggested we run an official 12 month pilot and we are hopeful they will find a bit of funding for Phase 1 of this.
However, we have spent a lot of our own money so far and loads and loads of our time. This has presented us with a cashflow problem that requires us to raise £1000 to keep the website up so we can develop it further, we'd also like to get some flyers and poster printed etc.
We'd be extremely grateful if you could take a look here: and spare a £1, £5, 10 to help us reach the initial target.
We are confident that once we get the site up and running we will be able attract:
Sponsors
Funding
Landlords who will advertise
The above will allow us self finance the site.
Could we also ask another big favour??
SHARE THE HELL OUT OF THIS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS?
People of Birmingham...We need your support to make it happen.
Thanks
Homeless Rooms Birmingham Team
We need a bit of help to revolutionise homelessness in Birmingham. We want to create Rightmove for Homeless People & Sofa Surfers.
We've been working on this idea for the last 4 months.
We've met and spoken to literally hundreds of people and the overwhelming majority of the people we've connected with think it's a great idea too.
We are not naive, we don't think this will 'solve' homelessness as the issue is very very complex. However, we believe (and we've been told by major players in the sector) that www.HomelessRoomsBirmingham.co.uk has the potential to make a major dent in Homelessness locally.
It's a major problem that has become so prevalent in our great city. Like many people we believe that we live in such a rich country that really, no one should be homeless.
The idea of this site is pretty simple: There are dozens of homeless people in Birmingham sleeping rough TONIGHT and 5000-20000 more people are ‘sofa surfing’ with no place to call their own.
Birmingham City council receive over 100 homeless applications each week.
There are 1800 people in temporary accommodation and 350 people in Bed & Breakfasts which costs the council a lot of money... Millions of pounds every year.
Not many people know this, but in Birmingham there are dozens of landlords who own hundreds of properties with thousands of rooms who accept homeless people without the need for:
*Deposits
*Fees
*or Extortionate rents
Our research suggests there are in fact over 5000 such rooms available in Birmingham. At any one time the void rates (empty rooms) for these properties are on average between 10-20%. Therefore a quick calculation tells us that there are between [phone redacted] rooms that are available to homeless people TONIGHT that are currently EMPTY.
So this site will match empty rooms in supported accommodation flats and houses to homeless people and sofa surfers who need rooms.
NO BRAINER RIGHT?
Homeless Rooms aims to make sure that homeless people get a room and the support they need to move on in life.
At the moment the site is in BETA testing..
We have had quite a few discussions with various people at Birmingham City Council and they have been really supportive, suggesting ways that we can improve the site, improve standards of support and better safeguard new and existing tenants.
They have even suggested we run an official 12 month pilot and we are hopeful they will find a bit of funding for Phase 1 of this.
However, we have spent a lot of our own money so far and loads and loads of our time. This has presented us with a cashflow problem that requires us to raise £1000 to keep the website up so we can develop it further, we'd also like to get some flyers and poster printed etc.
We'd be extremely grateful if you could take a look here: and spare a £1, £5, 10 to help us reach the initial target.
We are confident that once we get the site up and running we will be able attract:
Sponsors
Funding
Landlords who will advertise
The above will allow us self finance the site.
Could we also ask another big favour??
SHARE THE HELL OUT OF THIS ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS?
People of Birmingham...We need your support to make it happen.
Thanks
Homeless Rooms Birmingham Team
Organizer
Lee Blake
Organizer
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