Embassy Village offers 40 canal-side flats and support with budgeting, cooking and finding work, to help men start new lives and rediscover community, reports the Guardian.

It costs a lot to live by the canal in central Manchester, with even the pokiest of studios renting for £1,000. But in Embassy Village, the city’s newest waterside community, residents do not need to be rich. Quite the opposite, in fact. To live there, you have to be male, homeless and ready to get your life back on track. Nestled between the River Irwell and the Bridgewater canal, just across from the fashionable Castlefield district, Embassy’s 40 studio flats have been built under two Victorian viaducts carrying the city’s trams and trains. The land has been given for free on a 125-year lease by Peel Group, the developer behind MediaCity and the Trafford Centre. Peel owns the canal as well, which means residents can fish and kayak when they are not taking part in sessions on budgeting, cooking and getting ready for work. Embassy, the Christian charity behind the village, describes it as “dress rehearsal” for life back in bricks and mortar, cutting out the middle man of the shelter for homeless people.

Chris, a 57-year-old former painter and decorator from the north-east, became Embassy’s first resident after spending most of his life on the streets “travelling from town to town with a tent”. When the Guardian visited, he was particularly enthused about the angling opportunities, hoping to beat his record of a 29lb carp. He seemed overwhelmed to have his own front door for the first time in years, and a view of the canal. “I’m very lucky,” he said, as he marvelled at the pristine white walls of his new home, his private wet room and his small but high-spec German kitchen, kitted out with Bosch appliances. “We want residents to feel like: ‘Wow, I’ve landed on my feet – I’m going to take this opportunity,’” said Embassy’s indefatigable founder, Sid Williams, whose first foray into helping homeless people involved turning Mumford & Son’s tour bus into a mobile shelter.

Williams, a former youth worker, wants residents to feel important and valued. “In God’s upside down economy, the last, the poor, the least – in this world’s eyes – are his VIPs. That’s who Jesus wanted to spend his time with. “And we were like, wouldn’t it be great to take that literally? So that’s why we got a VIP tour bus that had been touring Tinie Tempah and Coldplay and had a deeply inappropriate champagne fridge on it.” As on the tour bus, drugs and alcohol are banned at Embassy, and no visitors are allowed. But it was a common misconception that most homeless people were addicts, said Williams, noting that about 60% of people were made homeless after a relationship breakdown.

More and more “average Joes” were ending up on the streets, he said. When he started working in the sector in 2004, many people were “institutionalised, coming out of the care system, the armed forces, prison and shelters … Whereas now, we find there’s about 300% to 400% on top, just your average Joes: people who just can’t quite make ends meet any more”. Those not in work are helped to apply for housing benefit – about £625 a month for a single man in Manchester, which covers Embassy’s rent and a few costs. “This is like a dress rehearsal at managing a home, managing your finances and holding a job down,” said Williams. “Granted, there’s a lot of hand-holding here. We have one full-time support worker to every six residents, which is basically unheard of.”

Preparing residents for life outside Embassy was crucial, said Tim Heatley, a co-founder of Manchester developer Capital & Centric, who was in charge of raising the money for Embassy Village as chair of the Greater Manchester’s Mayor’s Charity. “Helping them to clean, cook, budget, get a job, keep a job. If we don’t get that right, then it will have failed.” He wants residents to be comfortable, but not so much that they don’t want to leave: “I think we need to quickly move people from here on to their own accommodation – somewhere else that’s not state-supported – so that they can continue then to rebuild and go on and not be reliant on the state.”

In Manchester, where 1 in 61 people are homeless, the social housing waiting list is 15 years for able-bodied men. “No chance, basically,” said Williams. At Embassy’s other projects in Greater Manchester, residents stay for an average of 14 months before going into private rentals. “Between 92% and 95% of residents leave us with a full-time job, no long-run benefits, going to private rental. So we’re unburdening the council housing waiting list in the process.”

For Bev Craig, Manchester city council’s leader, Embassy Village is a cheering sign that “good people can do good things”. The council will refer homeless people to Embassy because she likes the emphasis on community-building. “When we talk to people that find themselves on the streets, it’s a failure of mental health services, it’s failure of tackling addiction, and it’s the failure of not being able to deal with loneliness,” she said. She hopes Embassy will “treat those individuals like they’re part of a community, help them develop, and teach them what it means to be in safe and sustainable accommodation”.

The village is designed to encourage as much social interaction as possible, such as at weekly “family dinners” cooked by staff. A sports pitch and boxing gym are under construction, as is a joinery studio run by Oli Green, who crafted some of the fanciest kitchens in Cheshire before pivoting to work with homeless people. The £6.2m build has been funded by the Moulding Foundation and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as well as an extraordinary 130-strong coalition of local businesses working either for nothing or for zero profit – many of whom are also offering jobs and training to residents. But Williams is permanently fundraising to cover the costs of six staff members. James Whittaker, Peel’s managing director, sees the Manchester Embassy Village as the first of many. “We’re not stopping here,” he said. “We can copy this in every city in every town throughout the UK.”

London’s only dedicated drug and alcohol detox unit for homeless people is to close St Thomas’ Hospital has confirmed, reports the BBC.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the decision had been taken due to “rising costs”, adding that the service was “no longer affordable within existing funding”. The clinic, which is based at the hospital, ran with a £1m shortfall over the past year, and “there were also times when beds were underused”, the government added.

Co-founder of the Big Issue magazine and anti-poverty campaigner, Lord John Bird said he was “dismayed” at what he called a “short-sighted cost-cutting exercise”. The unit, which opened in 2021, worked to support people who sleep rough to “safely withdraw from alcohol and drugs as part of the first steps in a treatment journey”. The service also provided peer support, groups, and activities alongside a range of other initiatives focusing on stopping smoking, healthy eating, essential screening, vaccinations and mental wellbeing.

Lord Bird described the closure of the unit as “pulling the service out from beneath the people who desperately need it”. He added: “All we’re doing is pushing these problems back on to the streets. These patients will end up filling up A&Es, they’ll end up being more chaotic, they’ll end up in prisons.” The campaigner said the news of the closure “rubbished” the Mayor of London’s goal of ending rough sleeping in the capital by 2030.

The Mayor’s Office said that the Greater London Authority (GLA) “is not responsible for the unit and its funding”. A spokesperson for the Mayor said: “The mayor does not have powers to commission healthcare, but is committed to supporting vulnerable Londoners and recognises the importance of addiction treatment and detoxification services. That’s why City Hall has sought assurance from the capital’s health authorities that Londoners will continue to have access to detoxification services following this closure, and that any disruption will be kept to a minimum while a new service is developed.”

The BBC asked the DCHS and the City of London Corporation (which funds the service) about the possibility of a new service, as mentioned by City Hall, but neither would comment.

Some people are not considered for social housing due to fears they will not be able to sustain tenancies because of low incomes or insecure finances – but where else are people meant to live? The Big Issue investigates.

There is a critical shortage of social housing across the UK. This is most acute in England where we are losing more homes for social rent than we are building. Last year we saw a net loss of nearly 4,000 social rented homes against a backdrop of rising homelessness. There are record levels of households trapped in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping continues to rise, trends which are driven by a shortage of genuinely affordable homes.

Given the current shortfall in supply, how we distribute the available social homes has never been more important. This year’s UK Housing Review shows overall social lettings in England have remained relatively stable (264,000) after a sharp decline since 2019-20. Lettings to new tenants in the social rented sector have also remained at a similar level (122,800 general needs lets) but are still 24% lower than 10 years ago. More positively, lets to homeless households have increased on the previous year (now at 75,000) and there has been a 37% increase in the last five years. Whilst the increase in lets to homeless households is welcome news, it is set against a significant rise in homelessness. We also know there is large variation in local practice by local authorities and housing associations when it comes to the proportions of lets being made to people experiencing homelessness.

Recent research by Crisis, conducted with Heriot-Watt University and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence, has shone a further light on current housing association allocations practices. It shows the difficulties people on the lowest incomes face in accessing social housing, as housing associations are forced to exclude applicants on the basis of their income. Based on a survey of housing associations across Britain, around a third of responding English housing associations said that pre-tenancy affordability checks often brought to light new information which led to an offer of housing being deemed unsuitable for an applicant. Nearly a quarter of responding housing associations (24%) also said that households below a certain income threshold are sometimes excluded from the housing register from which they receive applications for social housing lettings.

The result is that some applicants are not considered for a social home due to fears the offer is unsuitable and they will not be able to sustain tenancies because of low incomes or insecure finances. But the question remains, if you cannot access social housing, where else are you meant to live? We know there are huge challenges facing the housing association sector. The ongoing impact of welfare reform was a significant contributing factor in making these decisions. Restrictions to housing benefit and the benefit cap meant housing associations have needed to conduct more affordability checks. Compounding these concerns are the ever-increasing land and building costs alongside trying to bring existing stock up to new efficiency standards.

Yet there are areas of good practice that show what can be achieved. Where common allocations policies and/or a common housing register existed across local authorities and social landlords, there were more efficient ways to allocate homes. Further, a Scottish-style system could significantly improve allocations to homeless households. While a quarter of English housing associations reported often refusing nominations from the local authority because the offer was ‘unsuitable’, this was reported by only 6% of Scottish housing associations. A key difference between England and Scotland is the mandatory nature of ‘Section 5’ nominations, which require Scottish housing associations to rehouse statutorily homeless households referred to them by local authorities within a ‘reasonable period’ unless they have a ‘good reason’ not to do so.

England’s recently published National Plan to End Homelessness is considering all levers to require social landlords to rehouse homeless households “including legislating if necessary”. This could make a large difference to accessing homes now. While there remain structural factors that must be tackled – more investment and minimum targets for social rent homes and tackling the welfare deficit – we must ensure the very system that was set up to help people most in need does not continue to exclude people facing homelessness.

A homeless mother has credited a cafe with turning her life around “against all odds” and ensuring she kept custody of her young son, reports the BBC.

The mostly volunteer-led Curry on the Street in Nelson has delivered close to 60,000 hot meals and emotional support to those in need for decades – and is now being awarded a donation by Comic Relief, ahead of Red Nose Day. Since she started volunteering for the cafe, whilst still on the street, Sionne has had a child and celebrated two years sober from drink and drugs. She praised the centre’s manager James Foy who she said took the role “home with him”, whilst she is looking forward to her new life with her son, JJ, in her native Scotland.

When Sionne, now 39-years-old, fell pregnant whilst on the street, it was James who she first confided in. After losing custody of her first two kids in Scotland because she was a drug-addict, Sionne was scared it would happen for a third time. She said: “James said to me ‘listen even if you didn’t manage to succeed the first time, you don’t give up – I’ll be here for you, I’ll support you through thick and thin’. “He’s gone over and above what anybody in any type of centre I would have imagined would have done, James was the person who believed in me.”

Now she is “proud as punch” to be the mother of her one-year-old son, with the pair of them living a “fabulous” life. “I would have never thought I’d be able to have [JJ] in my care – I would have been one of those people who you’d want to keep your child away from because of the risk I imposed.”

Sionne volunteers at the centre everyday, she said, whilst her son JJ rings “Uncle James” every morning before they leave. Sionne said she now wants to carry on her volunteering work at the centre, to make JJ “proud” of her. The centre is staffed by around six cooks every day, one of whom is Keeley, who has been a volunteer for two years. The centre sells food to the local community, but the homeless and kids eat free.

Keeley was a beneficiary of the centre’s help when she dropped off a bag of her husband’s clothes as a donation, whilst out of work on sick leave. She said: “They help anybody who needs it – whether that’s addiction or mental health. We do emotional support, essentials bags, food parcels and outreach in Burnley providing sleeping bags,” she said.

Founded in 2019, Curry on the Street hopes to improve the lives of those who come through its doors – giving out hot meals and clothing in a “stigma-free” environment. Its manager Foy said the space allows its customers, usually the homeless and vulnerable, to “sit, have a chat, a brew or a meal”. Whilst the Comic Relief donation will be spent on new furniture and food, Foy said. “We have all types of people, from different backgrounds, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you are, it doesn’t matter – we accept everyone coming through the door,” he said.

The People’s Property Portfolio’s community share offer aims to buy up and restore a listed building for artists in Bradford to offer UK City of Culture legacy, reports the Big Issue.

A Bradford co-operative is giving residents the opportunity to have a stake in how a local building is brought back into community control, as it is set to become a multi-use workspace for local artists and cultural organisations. Through a community share offer campaign, the People’s Property Portfolio (PPP) is allowing people to buy social investment shares from £50 to help raise funds to restore and renovate 17-21 Chapel Street, a Grade II listed building in Bradford’s city centre.

PPP is aiming to bring buildings back into long-term community ownership after seeing community groups and artists “forced out of spaces by absent landlords or property developers”. In November 2025, the group acquired the building at 17-21 Chapel Street, originally a Quaker school for boys before becoming home to the Bradford Resource Centre, a group of activists and trade union movements. With the building since falling into disrepair, PP plans to “revitalise” it as an arts hub, using the community share offer campaign to fund its refurbishment.

“For too long, we have seen artists forced out of the temporary spaces that they have improved by landlords that want to profit from their efforts,” PPP’s chair Harry Jelley told the Big Issue. “We also regularly see community organisations priced out of the rental market. We’re asking for investment from local people, and supporters from beyond Bradford, who care about a democratic vision for our city, keeping the doors of this heritage building open. We don’t want a city centre determined for us by greedy developers or rogue landlords who don’t care about how Bradford works for the people – just the future commercial value of their properties.”

PPP claims that if the 17-21 Chapel Street restoration is a success, it will continue the project over a number of other buildings and spaces. Jelley said: “We have our first property, and we are in this position of vitally needing funds to get us through this next stage towards capital works on the project.” Explaining that the group has building consent and planning permission to do the work, he explained that the share offer is about securing the funds to “bring the building into use. It’s about reinvigorating what’s been an empty building for the last 20 years and getting it to the state where it can serve the community again,” Jelley added.

He explained that the building would have a “huge impact” on the arts in Bradford, which was named the UK City of Culture in 2025, an honour that Jelley said “cemented our drive to make special things happen in our city and build on that with the ambition and talent here in our district. There are so many good arts and community organisations in Bradford that are doing incredible work with communities, but they’re always having to think about where they might be next year or next month,” Jelley said. “What we want to do is be a socially-minded landlord that provides secure tenancies in buildings that are fit for purpose, so they can do all of that work and not always be having to manage a building as well as operate out of it.”

Explaining the need to bring arts venues back into community hands, Jelley spoke about a building which collapsed on Dale Street in Bradford in December 2025, which had reportedly been empty for years. “This is what happens when the landlords who own these buildings are absentee… or holding it as an asset and aren’t interested in how these spaces can work for the community,” he said. “Bradford city centre is just peppered with these buildings that deserve way more care, and our communities deserve to have a city centre where these buildings are working for us. We want to challenge all of those structures that mean that our city centres aren’t thriving, and that wealth is extracted from the city rather than being held in the hands of the people.”

He added that by investing in PPP with the share offer, “you’re not only giving vital resource to get us through these next few years, but also you’re becoming a member, and that means that you can join meetings… you can vote for who’s on the board, you can have a key say in those big decisions for our organisation”. He added: “You don’t have to be living in Bradford or from Bradford to invest, or to want to invest,” he added. “We’re trying to do things differently here and show that community ownership of space and in our city centres can help our cities thrive, and if you believe in that, then it’s worth investing.”

The first stage of the community share offer will run until 16 April.