‘Shelter’ is one of the physiological needs (alongside air to breathe, food to eat and water to drink) defined in the American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Physiological needs must be met before consideration can be given to needs further up the hierarchy such as safety and emotional connection.
To some extent, this is a pragmatic as well as a logical distinction. There’s no point trying to address a person’s social isolation while they are drowning. As those that work with homeless people will attest, so many problems - not least where to find the person who needs help - are addressed by the provision of shelter.
At Kanndoo, we recognise shelter as a fundamental human right. The first iteration of our app was intended to assist homeless people get access to services. Naturally, given the target demographic, ‘shelter’ was given prominence within the system.
The idea was that organisations that provide shelter to homeless people - both regular provision and emergency extreme weather provision - could register their details on our app, which could be used by those in need to access support.
We’ve recently begun the task of expanding the app. We want our app to be used as a tool to help all people affected by the Cost of Living Crisis. And ‘shelter’ will still be a category, because this is not an issue that affects only homeless people.
Shelter poverty affects millions of people in the UK. We all know that the payment of rent or mortgage and the associated costs (including energy bills and Council Tax) of running a home eat a substantial slice of our income every month. In almost all cases, this will be an individual or family unit’s largest outgoing.
There’s no official definition of how large that slice needs to be to put people into shelter poverty. However, there are increasing numbers of people who are putting themselves into debt or skipping meals in order to service shelter costs. In an economy as wealthy as the UK, these statistics are criminal and will only be addressed by government-level intervention: affordable housing, price caps, rent controls, and (whisper it) a massive redistribution of wealth and assets.
In the meantime, what are people supposed to do? We need to support each other, and we think the Kanndoo app can be a tool to help us all do that. We want to connect people to the support that already exists. In terms of shelter, in addition to the kinds of charitable emergency provision for rough sleepers that we already list, we need to be linking to organisations that support those at risk of losing their homes.
We imagine we’ll be listing these kinds of organisations under the category of ‘shelter’:
- Charities that offer advice on managing money
- Support for people fleeing domestic abuse
- Grant and loan funds for struggling households
- Free legal counsel for those served with eviction notices
- Local government departments that can offer assistance.
If any of that sounds like you, or if you offer a shelter poverty assistance service we’ve omitted, then we want to hear from you. Get in touch by calling 01603 971590, emailing enquiries@kanndoo.org or by using the contact form on our website.
