The homelessness charity Crisis is set to become a landlord for the first time in its 60-year history, declaring that Britain’s housing emergency has reached a “catastrophic scenario.”

Chief executive Matt Downie said the charity will soon launch a major fundraising drive to purchase homes outright, after finding it increasingly impossible to secure social housing for the people it supports.

The move marks a significant shift in strategy for one of the UK’s most prominent homelessness organisations, reflecting the deepening shortage of affordable housing and the growing number of people unable to find a secure place to live.

“We don’t want to do this, but if nobody else is going to provide housing, we’ll do it ourselves,” Matt Downie, the charity’s chief executive told the press. “It’s something that would have been inconceivable for my predecessors 10, 30, 50 years ago, because people would have expected both councils and housing associations to provide the stock needed for people on low incomes. It’s just no longer available.”

“We wouldn’t be doing this unless the wheels had come off the homelessness and housing system,” he continued. 

A new study from Crisis, published yesterday, found that nearly 300,000 families and individuals across England are facing the most severe forms of homelessness. This includes people sleeping rough on the streets, living in tents or squats, or trapped in unsuitable temporary housing such as B&Bs and hostels.

The research, conducted by Heriot-Watt University, revealed that 299,100 households in England experienced acute homelessness in 2024 — a 21% rise since 2022 and a 45% increase since 2012.

The report also highlighted sharp increases among specific groups: homelessness among people leaving hospitals, prisons, and other institutions rose by 22% over the past year, while cases linked to evictions from UK asylum accommodation surged by 37%.

According to Downie, the UK has not “seen homelessness numbers this bad in living memory but we’ve also never had better evidence on what to do about it”.

“Nobody needs persuading that we’re in a catastrophic scenario,” he added. “When I started working in homelessness, the average age of death [for a homeless male] was 47. It’s now gone down to 44. We’ve started to see the first cases of children on our streets. That doesn’t seem to shock people enough.”

The charity has already set up its own letting agency to help secure access to private rented housing for its clients, and it is now about to go about providing its own social housing to high-needs people with bespoke support, starting in London and Newcastle.

Downie went on: “We will proudly go about acquiring and providing our own homes, mainstream housing, because that’s the answer. We won’t get anywhere without the housing,” he said.

“Our strategy is to get to at least a thousand homes in the first phase, and we’ve got Housing First tenancy support teams in those two cities ready to go to support people. But the ambition is to move to something even bigger so that we can demonstrate that the solution to homelessness is housing.”

“We’re about 200 yards away here from the first Peabody estate which is the birth of social housing in this country and yet around the corner we’re having to start again,” he said.

Crisis is calling on the government to urgently deliver the homelessness strategy, pledged in Labour’s manifesto and now due to be published by Christmas, and increase housing benefit to reflect the true cost of private rents.

The government has committed £39bn towards its social and affordable homes programme, with a target of building 180,000 new social homes over the next 10 years.

EYE NEWS UPDATE: Mayors to have greater influence over housebuilding drive