Your landlord decides to sell up, you are offered the chance to buy but owning is way outside of your budget, so you stick it out. Your relationship with your landlord deteriorates as you become a “problem” to their plans and they issue you with a Section 21 eviction notice.

In an attempt to avoid a County Court Judgement and the very powerful, financial fall out you leave of your own volition, but having nowhere to go you turn to friends and family, you are now “sofa-surfing”, the effects of instability start to take hold, how long can you bed down without out-staying your welcome? Keeping yourself looking professional is challenging, you don’t want to overstep the generosity of your host by leaving your washing all over the house, and the stress of knowing your accommodation is temporary affects your mental health, anxiety and panic attacks creep in, “You’re just not reliable enough” says your boss as they let you go.

As you move one more time to another kind friends front room, you realise you’ve managed to get all your belongings into 1 bag, and you wonder what’s happened to your life.

3 months later, you’ve run out of options, and so you’re on the streets, no home, no income and no support network, you’ve given up asking for help, the shame of your situation is weighing so heavily round your neck.

The panic attacks are getting more frequent and you’re finding yourself in dangerous situations. There are people who say they want to help, but the cost gets higher and higher. After one particularly frightening night you think, there’s got to be another way, and so you start to look at the institutional help out there.

At the job centre, as you start your universal credit claim, you realise you don’t know which address to put down, and that until you do, it’s going to be very difficult to engage with these services. At the same time you start to feel like maybe it’s time to go to the doctor about your panic attacks, but… same problem, you don’t have an address.

An outreach service finds you, you get an assessment and you’re given temporary accommodation, but you’re in a building with 20 other people, all with their own trauma’s and means of coping, and you slip up, someone looks at you wrong, or say’s the wrong thing and you get triggered, all your trauma, anxiety and fragility explode out of you. The people who run this place aren’t happy with you, and you’re back on the streets.

And so, the cycle continues; no home, deteriorating mental and physical health, no access to support services, a chance you can’t keep hold of… no home.

This is not a unique story, it’s one we’ve heard a thousand times, and it’s one we’ll never get tired of hearing.

One of the core values of KCAH is that “Everyone should have the opportunity to have a safe and stable home”, which is more than just a roof over your head, this is support, optimism and belief in your ability to break out of the cycle.

We pride ourselves on offering heart and a warm handshake to anyone and everyone, it’s at the very foundation of the work we do, with layer upon layer of specialised support and direction to access the right services for your specific set of circumstances.

On World Homelessness Day, we wanted to remind you, any of you, that whatever may lead you to our door, you are welcome, and we will do everything we can to support you.