One Year of Spires' Refugee Support
This week, Spires celebrates one year of delivering services from Croydon to support newly-granted refugees facing homelessness. Each Tuesday, three members from the Spires team visit CRDC to establish a pop-up assessment service. In collaboration with Croydon Refugee Day Centre, we have successfully assisted 103 individuals through this work over the past year.
Who is a Refugee?
A refugee is someone who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war and persecution. They are unable to return home until conditions are safe for them again. In the UK a person becomes a refugee when government agrees that someone who has applied for asylum meets the definition. Once someone is recognised as a refugee, they are at risk of homelessness because they can no longer stay in the Home Office provided accommodation, and have just 28 days to find somewhere else to stay. Refugees will face other challenges to finding a safe place to stay, such as lack of support network, language barrier, little to no savings, and lack of awareness of their housing rights and entitlements - all these factors increase their risk of homelessness.
Our Achievements
We are proud to report notable achievements in our support services. To date; we have assisted 48 people in finding accommodation, 20 people to receive health support, 24 people have benefitted from our benefits support, and 8 people have been supported to avoid eviction.
Croydon Refugee Day Centre said “We were delighted to form a partnership with Spires a year ago to support newly recognised refugees who are street homeless or facing imminent street homelessness. Over the last year, this partnership project has been of enormous value to our community members during the transition from asylum seeker status to refugee statues, providing them with specialist support at they go through the challenges of adapting to another new system and helping them avoid homelessness”.
Case Studies
Z is a 31year old Eritrean male with refugee status. He first attended our drop-in on 17 September as he had received a notice to vacate his hotel accommodation by 7 October 2024. Having only arrived in the UK in March 2024, he had no friends, family or support network in the UK. Spires helped him to make an application Croydon Council housing and homeless self-referral but he was found not to be in priority need. On 25th September, Spires supported Z to make an application to an accommodation provider in Croydon which supports under 35s. Z was invited to an interview assessment and on 30 September he accepted an offer of accommodation and is now housed. With Spires’ help Z was able to find suitable and safe accommodation before his notice to vacate date, which means he was able to avoid becoming street homeless.
P attended the drop in after being referred by Young Roots. P had been told by his landlord that he needed to leave his accommodation in a week. This had not been served as a formal eviction and did not give P sufficient time to find accommodation. The Spires team re-iterated that P has tenancy rights and did not need to leave on the date given by the landlord. The Landlord was emailed to highlight that MA had an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) and would not be able to find somewhere to live in time. This was added to emails from Young Roots and others. The result was that the landlord served a proper notice which means that MA has some time to find alternative accommodation. This is an example of how Spires has educated this group on their rights, advocated their behalf and supported in a multi-agency response.