September 14, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode of the Rural Homelessness Podcast, host Matt McChlery speaks with Rory Weal, chair of the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition, about the pressing issue of rural homelessness. They discuss the coalition's formation, the unique challenges faced by rural communities, and the importance of raising awareness. Rory shares statistics on rural homelessness, highlights the coalition's successes, and outlines best practices for local authorities. They also explore the potential of the Housing First model in rural areas and the establishment of a community of practice to foster collaboration among service providers. Rory expresses hopes for a future where homelessness is recognized and addressed effectively across all communities. Listen now.
Website
Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition website
Takeaways
- Rural homelessness is often overlooked and misunderstood.
- The Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition was formed to address this crisis.
- Awareness and changing perceptions are crucial for tackling rural homelessness.
- Isolation and lack of services are significant challenges in rural areas.
- Statistics on rural homelessness are often underreported.
- The coalition aims to bring rural homelessness into mainstream discussions.
- Best practices for local authorities include community-based outreach.
- Housing First could be a viable solution in rural contexts.
- A community of practice can enhance collaboration among service providers.
- Future efforts should focus on comprehensive strategies to end homelessness.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Rural Homelessness 00:58 Understanding the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition 04:50 Raising Awareness of Rural Homelessness 11:03 The Unique Challenges of Rural Homelessness 16:46 Statistics and Trends in Rural Homelessness 19:10 Celebrating Successes of the Coalition 21:28 Best Practices for Local Authorities 24:51 Exploring Housing First in Rural Areas 27:39 Building a Community of Practice 31:25 Future Aspirations for the Coalition
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
This is the Rural Homelessness Podcast, where we discuss the important issues around ruralhomelessness, hear from those affected by it, and offer some solutions.
Brought to you by the award -winning homelessness charity, The Ferry Project.
Welcome to the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
(00:28):
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
I'm your host, Matt McChlery Thanks so much for clicking over here and joining in withthis very important conversation today.
We are going to be zooming in on the whole topic of rural homelessness.
And in today's show, I am joined by the chair of the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition,Rory Weal So why don't we dive straight in?
(00:58):
and welcome Rory to the show.
Hello Rory and welcome to the show.
Thanks very much for having me.
It's great to have you with us today.
You are the chair of Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition.
Could you restart off by you explaining what is the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition?
(01:21):
Yeah, I'm happy to.
So we are a coalition of over 25
organisations that are committed to ending homelessness in rural communities.
And we were formed when a variety of housing associations and housing providers cametogether with the representatives of rural communities out of a shared recognition that
(01:48):
there was a growing crisis in our rural communities across England that wasn't getting theattention
that it needed and deserved.
as a result, many people were kind of going without the essentials and going without aroof over their heads because of our sort of collective failure as a society to provide
(02:13):
adequate support and provision.
So the coalition was set up off the back of a research report, which found that ruralhomelessness was rising and had been rising
in recent years.
through interviews with people who were experiencing homelessness, that could include kindof sofa surfing, in kind of family or friends places, or it could include kind of staying,
(02:47):
living in woods, in tents, in barns and outhouses.
So a real range of experiences.
And this research kind of pulled together interviews with people.
that had those experiences and really shone a light on how ignored and isolated many ofthose people were.
So we formed the coalition out of a recognition that that was unacceptable, that we wantedto tackle it, that we believed that it could be tackled.
(03:14):
And since then, we've been trying to raise awareness, attention and increase the amount ofsupport that go into communities for individuals that are at risk of homelessness because
no one should have to spend the night without a roof on their heads.
That's something we fundamentally believe.
And I must say, working with the ferry project based here in East Anglia and in the Fens,that a lot of what you've said about the lack of recognition and the struggles that people
(03:44):
who are homeless in rural areas have rings true for us and the clients that we deal withas well.
Yes, you're right.
It is a nationwide problem.
And it's one of those things, isn't it?
Where when people think of homelessness, just the perception of homelessness itself seemsto be urban based.
(04:05):
Homeless, you think of someone on the street or you think of someone sort of on a bench,but in a city or in a shop doorway, you don't think of someone under a hedge in a form on
the side of a farmer's field somewhere.
it isn't an image that comes to mind.
(04:26):
I guess raising awareness is trying to help that perception to change.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
And I think images are very powerful things and you can have all the kind of evidence inthe world, but often when you're trying to make change happen, you have to engage with the
mental images that people have, the perceptions they have.
(04:47):
And you're absolutely right that homelessness
as a term and as a concept is something which is associated with cities.
In many ways that has a kind of logic to it.
It's much more visible in towns and cities.
Cities and towns do struggle with very high and unacceptably high levels of homelessness.
But it's about the kind of hidden nature of homelessness in rural communities.
(05:10):
People don't have that image at the forefront of their minds, unlike they do if they were,say, kind of perhaps walking through London because...
that homelessness is less visible in rural communities.
So it requires a much more proactive effort to shine a spotlight on it, to tell thestories.
And it's why one of the projects that we're kind of currently working on is a photographyproject, which is looking at how we depict homelessness and to try and improve in the
(05:38):
media, create a more diverse sense and image of what homelessness is.
So kind of challenging the idea that
it's just, for example, in much of the media coverage, if you kind of look at a storyaround homelessness, you'd often see the depiction of probably, usually a man, you know,
probably maybe perhaps middle aged outside a kind of a tube station or in a very kind ofurban environment.
(06:04):
And that's a very kind of that's one particular experience, an experience that iscertainly there.
But there's an awful lot more that's going on.
And we need to kind of create these images in our media.
and in our society that reflect the diversity of the experience, because that's how westart to change people's perceptions.
And that's how we start to change what people think the solutions are.
(06:28):
And that's when kind of, yeah, real change, lasting change for all our communitieshappens.
That's really good.
You might have already covered this in the previous answer, because I want to ask you whatpromoted the birth.
of the coalition, you've already mentioned this piece of research, but is there some kindof sort of story or, know, did something happen to prompt this research in the first
(06:56):
place?
What was that sort of original kind of mustard seed idea that's now led to the growth ofthis coalition?
Yeah, definitely.
So a lot of people in the coalition kind of have different kind of stories or journeys forkind of getting to here.
Probably the most relevant of my own was I was working at St.
(07:18):
Mungo's at the time, which is a kind homelessness charity, provides a lot of serviceprovision for people experiencing homelessness kind of across primarily the south of
England.
And in the late 2010s, we'd seen increases in levels of rough sleeping that were quitedramatic.
That was the result of changes in policy, less affordable housing.
(07:42):
less money for local authorities.
And that was having an effect in communities.
And it was in about kind of around 2018, where we started to see that there was this realuptick in needs in smaller market towns.
So, you know, for example, well, the part of the country that I'm from in Kent, towns likeMaidstone, areas such as kind of say Swale, Thanet, Canterbury,
(08:11):
Not necessarily rural areas as such, but not cities, towns, market towns.
And I think that was prompting kind of some concern that the rough sleeping was popping upin places where actually a few years ago there was no visible, there was no visible kind
of crisis of rough sleeping, if you like.
(08:32):
So it was in these areas where it started to be more visible that I was really interestedin exploring why that was.
whether we were kind of not identifying levels of needs that were actually very, veryhigh, but even less visible in the more rural areas.
And that had certainly kind of come through anecdotally.
(08:55):
Off the back of that, I did a piece of research actually in the United States where they'dhad a big drive to tackle rural homelessness.
And I was really interested in the fact that they were looking at rural homelessness as adistinct category.
that they had a lot of research and evidence that we don't have in the UK.
So I went over there on something called a Churchill Fellowship, which is a fund tosupport kind of research into new areas and new policy issues.
(09:23):
And, you know, I saw some really, really interesting things there.
I saw communities that had created for the first time outreach teams and support teams inrural communities that were using kind of
better data, they were able to identify who was experiencing homelessness and when.
And as a result, they were really able to kind of tackle the problem and address the rootcauses.
(09:45):
So it was when I kind of came back with those findings and published them, I connectedwith a lot of different people that were saying, actually, this really resonates with what
I'm seeing.
And one of them is English Rural Housing Association, who kind of work in rural areasacross the south of England.
And they'd been seeing a lot of pressure in their communities and
a lot of people that were at risk of homelessness and falling into homelessness who 10years ago would never have been in that position.
(10:12):
So these kind of threads came together.
People all have their different journeys, but the coalition was kind of formed out of acollective recognition that there was something going on that was concerning and a
resolution that we knew that there were changes that could be made to tackle the problemand kind of end homelessness.
(10:33):
as examples, say from the United States or elsewhere showed, so yeah, it was, it was, it,it, it was a period of, of kind of, you know, kind of intense collaboration.
and it kind of came out of very, very high and worrying levels of needs.
and, you know, as a result, we were able to kind of create something that brought togethera diverse range of people with that shared commitment.
(10:58):
You said that, one of the things that interested you about
the data from America was that rural homelessness was treated as a distinct category.
So in your mind, in your view, is that justified?
Is rural homelessness different from other types of homelessness?
(11:21):
And if so, from your experience, how is rural homelessness a different type ofhomelessness?
It's a really good question.
And I think when
when we kind of talk about homelessness and the different types of homelessness, it'sreally important to also start with what is shared, which is that there's a common
experience of homelessness and it always comes down in some way to the absence ofappropriate housing, right?
(11:50):
So I think you have to start with a kind of common shared understanding.
However, it can be useful to look at the differences of people's experiences.
because it allows you to kind of target your interventions to look at where we're failingand where particular groups are falling through the net.
So whether that's youth homelessness, which has its own kind of causes and drivers in somecases, whether that's homelessness affecting other groups that just kind of LGBT
(12:19):
communities, actually, when you kind of apply this lens, you're more able to identify
failings that are specific to particular groups and communities.
And rural homelessness is, is similar in many ways to that.
It doesn't mean that it needs its own entire approach.
It doesn't mean the experience is completely different, but it does mean that there areparticular things and particular challenges, which need to be overcome.
(12:48):
to answer your question about what those challenges are and what the difference is.
think the first one is, is, is isolation.
So if I take the example of one of our advocates who has done a lot of work with thecoalition, a guy called Frank who was experiencing homelessness in the southeast of
(13:13):
England, just actually just outside Worthing.
And he was camping in the woods there for over a year.
And he was there because he felt that the town centers were dangerous.
He didn't feel safe there.
(13:34):
He felt like he'd come off the back of evictions.
He couldn't hold down housing as a result.
And he kind of went into the woods and tried to be kind of self -sufficient there.
And his story is quite remarkable because of how he didn't interact with any services.
(13:54):
barely in that time, you he would occasionally go to perhaps a kind of day center or foodbank, but the way he talks about it, he did feel really, really isolated from that
support.
Whereas if you're in a more urban environment and you're rough sleeping, you're much morelikely to come across an outreach worker, a support worker.
And there can be challenges with getting that support, but you're much more likely to havethose interactions in rural areas, you're not because the services just aren't there.
(14:24):
And that was a really isolating experience.
And it actually took the provision of support and a kind of a particular interaction witha charity called Turning Tides for Frank to kind of be connected with the support he
needed to find long -term housing, which he ended up doing.
But that took much, much longer than you would hope, especially for somebody who, youknow, clearly kind of...
(14:50):
was looking for that support and looking for that opportunity to kind of find long termhousing.
So the differences are often about the lack of services, the isolation people see andexperience.
There are also differences often around stigma in rural communities.
We often hear kind of reports that it's much harder to kind of provide services, attitudesperhaps are sometimes more hostile.
(15:20):
flip side is that sometimes there is a kind of shared sense of community that you can tapinto, which provides effective support for individuals like Frank.
So it's definitely complex.
But when you when it kind of, you know, you look at it.
The reason why I think it's important to look at rural homelessness through that lens isbecause it allows us to challenge the idea it's just something that happens in urban
(15:49):
areas.
And that's important to build support for more affordable housing, more social housing.
We often don't hear a conversation around social housing in rural areas, but theunaffordability of rural areas is really, really acute.
So it allows us to kind of make the case for that.
It allows us to identify that we need services in these communities because the need isthere, even if it's less visible.
(16:12):
So for all those reasons, it's useful to single out these experiences.
It doesn't mean that you need a completely different approach in rural areas.
It doesn't mean that urban homelessness is any less of an issue.
It absolutely is.
So these lenses just allow us to see things in more depth and richness than we otherwisewould.
And that's great.
Thank you, Rory.
(16:33):
On your website, there are some statistics about homelessness in Britain and ruralhomelessness.
Can you share with us what some of these are?
Yeah, of course.
the first thing is when you're
kind of counting homelessness, it's already quite tricky to do.
And it's particularly difficult in rural areas for all the reasons I've said.
So any statistics we have are often a kind of an undercount and there'll be people thataren't presenting for support and aren't found.
(17:01):
But if you look at kind of one of the definitions of homelessness, which is statutoryhomelessness, so that's people that are presenting to their council and they're found to
have some kind of need and the council has an obligation to provide support to thatindividual.
In that case, were 24 ,000 people according to the campaign to protect rural England whoexperienced homelessness in rural areas in 2022 -23.
(17:27):
And that's been a significant increase compared to five years ago.
If you look at rough sleeping, that's seen an increase of 24 % in that year, 2022 -23.
So an increase on the previous year.
When it comes to rough sleeping on a single night,
from the snapshot figures we have, you're looking at several hundred people.
(17:49):
But we know from the other research we've done that that is a significant underestimationof the level of needs in these communities.
The other thing that's interesting is when you look at levels of rough sleeping, say, on awhat they call a per capita basis, so the proportion of people that are rough sleeping in
rural areas, actually you often see areas like Bedford, Boston,
(18:14):
North Devon with rates of rough sleeping that are higher than Leeds or Norwich or someareas of London.
actually the proportion of people in rural areas that are rough sleeping, according tothese stats, often is a kind of at least as high as the more urban areas.
So clearly there is a real crisis here, one that's increased.
(18:40):
But we really need, you know, kind of
commitment to kind of better data.
You know, what you count has an effect on what you create and what you target, which iswhy we're so keen to increase our approaches to better counting and better data to ensure
everyone's found and that we can have a solution for everybody.
(19:00):
Thank you.
In July of this year, during rural housing week, you celebrated your first anniversary asa coalition.
Congratulations.
What are some of the successes that you've had during your first year?
Thanks.
And yeah, it was great to kind of have that moment.
(19:22):
I think overall, our overall success has been really putting rural homelessness in thekind of mainstream conversation around homelessness, which is something we've always
wanted.
We don't want it to be a of a niche issue or something off at the sides.
We just want kind of everybody in the space to be thinking about
the diversity of all of our communities when we are tackling homelessness, whether that'skind of government, whether that's the media.
(19:46):
So I think our successes are when we've been able to bring that contribution to bear.
whether that's, know, we've had a lot of great media coverage, kind of national newspackages on some of the stories and the testimony of individuals who've experienced
homelessness in rural areas.
So that's been a real success.
we've brought our findings to conferences where we've had a lot of coverage there too.
(20:12):
But I think most crucially, we're really engaging with government on the issue.
And through a piece of work we did on what local authorities can do to better adoptpractices to tackle rural rough sleeping, we saw lots of local authorities use that to
inform their homelessness strategies and to have that recognition.
(20:34):
that rural homelessness is something that should be considered, not just homelessness inthe more urban areas.
So all of those things together have kind of had a real impact.
And we were really pleased and proud to be receiving an affordable housing awards for kindof campaign of the year, which we received a few months ago as a kind of recognition of
(20:59):
this awareness raising work.
But really, we want to be in a place in which we don't need to be doing this because thisconversation is just part and parcel.
And I think we're moving towards that point, which is really welcome to say.
Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
Well done.
(21:19):
You mentioned just briefly there your rough sleeping guide that you've made available tolocal authorities across the country.
Can you just tell us a little bit more about that in detail?
Just in case, I'm sure some listeners will be interested and you might even have sort ofcounty councillors listening in as well who may not be aware of this.
So what can you tell us about that?
(21:39):
Definitely.
So it's a piece of work that we developed with a group of people working in localgovernment who worked in rural areas and had housing or homelessness responsibilities.
And with them, we developed a set of kind of best practice to explore improving roughsleeping offers in rural areas.
And there were, I guess, a few themes that I'll pull out.
(22:01):
And this very much came from the local authorities as well as ourselves.
The first is our approach to outreach in rural areas.
So when it comes to kind of services which go out and find and identify people who arerough sleeping, in rural areas, you need to take slightly different approaches to the
model.
So you have to take a more kind of community referral -based approach.
(22:24):
There's an increased role for technology.
to kind of expand where you can reach and get into more remote areas.
There's often a need to not have such high barriers to people being what they say isverified as rough sleeping.
So often to get support, someone needs to be seen rough sleeping.
It's much harder in rural areas to do that.
(22:46):
So it requires a more flexible approach to that barrier.
And then an awareness that people can get that support.
there was another theme around kind of using better data.
So as I mentioned, data collection in rural areas being really key.
And then working to use methods such as the women's rough sleeping census, which is a newapproach, which means that you count homelessness by bringing together a broader range of
(23:16):
partners who might be at the spot where people are homeless, but wouldn't otherwise becounted.
So whether that's like,
perhaps local farmer or whether that's local post office, these kind of groups that mayhave knowledge and expertise around what people are experiencing in the rural area, but
who usually aren't involved in these conversations.
(23:36):
It's kind of bringing those people in the conversation too.
And then finally, you know, an emphasis on sort of partnering with more urban areas tokind of learn from what they've done and to kind of share information across the
boundaries of local authority areas.
That came through as a...
as a real theme, more integrated approaches, working better with health.
(23:59):
These are all kind of ways in which we can ensure that services are spotting when peopleare experiencing homelessness and making the right interventions at the right time.
And the work's been really helpful as a first step in starting to identify how we take anapproach in these rural areas where to date, it's been just difficult for people to kick
(24:20):
off these conversations because
there's not been a view that it's a problem that needs tackling and now that is startingto shift.
Yeah, that's great.
You've also started doing a feasibility study into rural housing first.
What are you hoping to achieve with this study?
Yeah, so you listed as maybe familiar with housing first, which is a model of support forpeople with experience of homelessness, which says that the most important thing is to
(24:48):
provide housing in the first instance.
that housing should be non -conditional.
They shouldn't have to pass a series of tests or demonstrate a level of readiness for thathousing.
And it also provides really intensive support.
So that individual may have had very difficult traumatic experiences.
It provides the housing with the wraparound support, like your own roof over your head isthe principle.
(25:12):
And it's really evidence -based, but that evidence is from rural areas, sorry, from urbanareas.
And...
what we wanted to do was to explore whether the model will work in the same way in ruralareas, because there aren't examples of Housing First being delivered at scale in rural
communities.
we've been talking to people who have been trying to do this work.
(25:35):
So an organization in Dorset who provide some units of Housing First in rural Dorset andthe kind of results speak for themselves in terms of the fact that people have kind of
been rough sleeping for years, but then come off the street and are able to live in thecommunity that they grew up in and able to have that long term stable accommodation with
(26:00):
support and not return to rough sleeping is a real testament.
And we know that often people won't want to kind of be in the cities.
They might not be from the city or they may in some cases be from the city, but they wantto kind of escape that environment, which is maybe associated with
trauma and harm and difficult relationships.
And this is why having a model of housing, which is available in rural areas as well asurban is so important because it respects the choice of the individual.
(26:30):
It respects the individual's kind of history and their connections to their community, alltheir desire for a fresh start.
And these things kind of come together to really underscore why a rural housing firstoffer.
could be quite transformative.
And that's what we're exploring in this study at the moment, whether we think that'sviable, and if so, how we get it off the ground.
(26:52):
I was just about to ask you how would that get off the ground, you're still exploringthat.
So that's fair enough.
So yeah, that's really interesting, actually.
So I do hope to see the results of that study when it comes out.
So thank you for doing that.
You've also got a community of practice, a rural homelessness community of practice.
(27:18):
Can you just explain what that is and how that works?
Yeah, I guess it's a bit of a technical phrase, but essentially what it is is gettingpeople in a room with a shared interest and shared expertise in facing up to the
homelessness crisis in rural communities and get those people in a room.
(27:39):
get them talking to one another, which sounds incredibly simple, but often is somethingwhich we've not done in the past.
Many people are working in their community to tackle their issue and they can feel quiteisolated.
They can feel like they don't know what other people are doing in other parts of thecountry, what's working for them, what's not working.
So the whole idea behind this was to work with Homeless Link, who are a membership bodythat represent a lot of different
(28:05):
homeless service providers.
I the ferry project is one of their members.
And it's to get groups like the ferry project and the fantastic work that the ferryproject does into contact with other providers who maybe are operating in rural areas, but
they're much earlier on in their journey.
(28:26):
And they want to learn from the things you've done, having been here for 25 years.
It's getting those, those kind of almost those mentoring relationships, that informationsharing, that idea sharing.
and from that, I think you can really start to spread great practice across the country.
(28:48):
and it's much better if that comes from someone that's done it.
That has the experience that if someone's just kind of telling you to do it because youshould do it.
So it's bringing those people together, having those conversations.
And in a way, you know, this podcast and what you're doing with this series is a kind ofform of this approach because it's shining a light on experiences.
(29:09):
It's increasing understanding and dialogue.
And as a result, the hope is that people will adopt things and take actions.
So these connections are really key and something we've been prioritizing and thecommunity of practices is a kind of latest initiative to, to encourage that work.
how, how would an organization or someone be able to
(29:30):
access this community of practice.
How does someone get put in touch with a group or know when people are meeting in a roomto discuss these things and then be invited along?
How can people get in on this?
Yeah, I mean we've got a mailbox that we always welcome if people want to kind of get moreinvolved, which I'm sure we can share with yourself and listeners.
(29:56):
you know, we are, we're really open.
If you're working in providing services or support in rural areas for people experiencinghomelessness, then this could be a good space and initiative to join.
So we'd really welcome that.
And we can, we can share those, those details, of course, because yeah, there's a lot ofstrength in people kind of coming together from, from, different places and different
(30:19):
experiences.
And we're, we're, know we're kind of just at the start of this journey.
So we definitely welcome that.
So what would the first step be?
Someone going on your website and finding the contact us page or something like that?
Yeah, that's right.
So we've got English rural.
If you go on the English rural website, we have a page on the rural homelessnesscoalition.
(30:41):
You'll be able to find contact details on that website.
So that would be the first step.
And then looking to be kind of put on the mailing list for the coalition would be yourfirst step to get more involved, to hear about what we do.
and then possibly join forums like the Community of Practice if that's something that's ofinterest as well.
(31:02):
That's great, thank you.
And what I'll be doing is I'll be putting a link to that page in this episode's show notesas well so that listeners who are interested can find that really easily.
Just before we come to an end, Rory, what are some of your hopes for the future of thecoalition?
In the years to come, what are some of your...
(31:25):
hopes and dreams and aspirations.
So it's a funny one, but I think one of my main hopes is that we don't have to do thiswork anymore.
Yeah.
I would love to be in a position where homelessness has the public recognition, thepolitical recognition that it needs and deserves.
(31:51):
And that as part of that, there's a real deep understanding of what homelessness is andthe fact it
It happens everywhere across all of our communities.
It doesn't just happen to one type of person.
It can happen to any of us.
Certain people are at increased risk of it, but it really does happen everywhere.
And it's all of our problem to fix.
(32:12):
So I think my hope would be that, you know, we've got, for example, we've got a newgovernment in power at the moment.
They have a commitment to a new strategy, cross government and homelessness.
We don't have any details on that yet.
But if I'm being optimistic and if I'm saying what I hope to happen over the next fewyears, you know, I hope we really use this as an opportunity for a reset where we have a
(32:35):
serious strategy to end homelessness, which includes building the genuinely affordablehousing across the country where it's needed, including in rural communities.
And that that housing is affordable to people that are at risk of homelessness.
Secondly, that we have
the kind of investment in local authorities that we know is essential and that we have apartnership with the voluntary sector and others to kind of harness those expertise and
(33:05):
the goodwill of communities to address the root cause of homelessness, which is providingaffordable housing, providing the kind of support services, whether that's mental health,
whether that's addressing people's kind of needs and providing skills and training.
And then also that our welfare system and our social security system also provides theadequate safety net that people need.
(33:30):
These are all the kind of measures that if we have them in place, then we will tackle thecrisis of rural homelessness and urban alike.
And then there won't be a need to be doing as much campaigning and advocacy.
So, you know, we're not going to turn this around overnight by any means.
And I don't think we're close to the point where, you know,
(33:52):
we kind of hang up our gloves as a sector at all.
But my real aspiration is that that endpoint at least feels in sight, where we can atleast see a world that feels a little bit more visible to us, where we don't need to be
doing what we're doing anymore, because our society values people and values the role ofhousing and support.
(34:18):
enough that no one is at risk of the kind of dangers and indignity of homelessness.
That's fantastic.
Well Rory, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today on the Rural Homelessness podcast.
It's been fascinating getting insights into what you and the Rural Homelessness CountsCoalition are doing.
(34:39):
So thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you for joining us.
Great, thanks.
It's been great to be here.
and thank you as well for listening to this episode of the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
Don't forget an episode comes out twice a month on the 1st and on the 15th.
So I do hope to have the pleasure of your company again on another episode of the RuralHomelessness Podcast.
(35:02):
Thanks for listening.
See you soon.
Goodbye.
Thank you for listening to the Rural Homelessness Podcast brought to you by The FerryProject.
Visit our website
on www .ferryproject .org .uk
This is the Rural Homelessness Podcast, where we discuss the important issues around ruralhomelessness, hear from those affected by it, and offer some solutions.
Brought to you by the award -winning homelessness charity, The Ferry Project.
Welcome to the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
(00:28):
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
I'm your host, Matt McChlery Thanks so much for clicking over here and joining in withthis very important conversation today.
We are going to be zooming in on the whole topic of rural homelessness.
And in today's show, I am joined by the chair of the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition,Rory Weal So why don't we dive straight in?
(00:58):
and welcome Rory to the show.
Hello Rory and welcome to the show.
Thanks very much for having me.
It's great to have you with us today.
You are the chair of Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition.
Could you restart off by you explaining what is the Rural Homelessness Counts Coalition?
(01:21):
Yeah, I'm happy to.
So we are a coalition of over 25
organisations that are committed to ending homelessness in rural communities.
And we were formed when a variety of housing associations and housing providers cametogether with the representatives of rural communities out of a shared recognition that
(01:48):
there was a growing crisis in our rural communities across England that wasn't getting theattention
that it needed and deserved.
as a result, many people were kind of going without the essentials and going without aroof over their heads because of our sort of collective failure as a society to provide
(02:13):
adequate support and provision.
So the coalition was set up off the back of a research report, which found that ruralhomelessness was rising and had been rising
in recent years.
through interviews with people who were experiencing homelessness, that could include kindof sofa surfing, in kind of family or friends places, or it could include kind of staying,
(02:47):
living in woods, in tents, in barns and outhouses.
So a real range of experiences.
And this research kind of pulled together interviews with people.
that had those experiences and really shone a light on how ignored and isolated many ofthose people were.
So we formed the coalition out of a recognition that that was unacceptable, that we wantedto tackle it, that we believed that it could be tackled.
(03:14):
And since then, we've been trying to raise awareness, attention and increase the amount ofsupport that go into communities for individuals that are at risk of homelessness because
no one should have to spend the night without a roof on their heads.
That's something we fundamentally believe.
And I must say, working with the ferry project based here in East Anglia and in the Fens,that a lot of what you've said about the lack of recognition and the struggles that people
(03:44):
who are homeless in rural areas have rings true for us and the clients that we deal withas well.
Yes, you're right.
It is a nationwide problem.
And it's one of those things, isn't it?
Where when people think of homelessness, just the perception of homelessness itself seemsto be urban based.
(04:05):
Homeless, you think of someone on the street or you think of someone sort of on a bench,but in a city or in a shop doorway, you don't think of someone under a hedge in a form on
the side of a farmer's field somewhere.
it isn't an image that comes to mind.
(04:26):
I guess raising awareness is trying to help that perception to change.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
And I think images are very powerful things and you can have all the kind of evidence inthe world, but often when you're trying to make change happen, you have to engage with the
mental images that people have, the perceptions they have.
(04:47):
And you're absolutely right that homelessness
as a term and as a concept is something which is associated with cities.
In many ways that has a kind of logic to it.
It's much more visible in towns and cities.
Cities and towns do struggle with very high and unacceptably high levels of homelessness.
But it's about the kind of hidden nature of homelessness in rural communities.
(05:10):
People don't have that image at the forefront of their minds, unlike they do if they were,say, kind of perhaps walking through London because...
that homelessness is less visible in rural communities.
So it requires a much more proactive effort to shine a spotlight on it, to tell thestories.
And it's why one of the projects that we're kind of currently working on is a photographyproject, which is looking at how we depict homelessness and to try and improve in the
(05:38):
media, create a more diverse sense and image of what homelessness is.
So kind of challenging the idea that
it's just, for example, in much of the media coverage, if you kind of look at a storyaround homelessness, you'd often see the depiction of probably, usually a man, you know,
probably maybe perhaps middle aged outside a kind of a tube station or in a very kind ofurban environment.
(06:04):
And that's a very kind of that's one particular experience, an experience that iscertainly there.
But there's an awful lot more that's going on.
And we need to kind of create these images in our media.
and in our society that reflect the diversity of the experience, because that's how westart to change people's perceptions.
And that's how we start to change what people think the solutions are.
(06:28):
And that's when kind of, yeah, real change, lasting change for all our communitieshappens.
That's really good.
You might have already covered this in the previous answer, because I want to ask you whatpromoted the birth.
of the coalition, you've already mentioned this piece of research, but is there some kindof sort of story or, know, did something happen to prompt this research in the first
(06:56):
place?
What was that sort of original kind of mustard seed idea that's now led to the growth ofthis coalition?
Yeah, definitely.
So a lot of people in the coalition kind of have different kind of stories or journeys forkind of getting to here.
Probably the most relevant of my own was I was working at St.
(07:18):
Mungo's at the time, which is a kind homelessness charity, provides a lot of serviceprovision for people experiencing homelessness kind of across primarily the south of
England.
And in the late 2010s, we'd seen increases in levels of rough sleeping that were quitedramatic.
That was the result of changes in policy, less affordable housing.
(07:42):
less money for local authorities.
And that was having an effect in communities.
And it was in about kind of around 2018, where we started to see that there was this realuptick in needs in smaller market towns.
So, you know, for example, well, the part of the country that I'm from in Kent, towns likeMaidstone, areas such as kind of say Swale, Thanet, Canterbury,
(08:11):
Not necessarily rural areas as such, but not cities, towns, market towns.
And I think that was prompting kind of some concern that the rough sleeping was popping upin places where actually a few years ago there was no visible, there was no visible kind
of crisis of rough sleeping, if you like.
(08:32):
So it was in these areas where it started to be more visible that I was really interestedin exploring why that was.
whether we were kind of not identifying levels of needs that were actually very, veryhigh, but even less visible in the more rural areas.
And that had certainly kind of come through anecdotally.
(08:55):
Off the back of that, I did a piece of research actually in the United States where they'dhad a big drive to tackle rural homelessness.
And I was really interested in the fact that they were looking at rural homelessness as adistinct category.
that they had a lot of research and evidence that we don't have in the UK.
So I went over there on something called a Churchill Fellowship, which is a fund tosupport kind of research into new areas and new policy issues.
(09:23):
And, you know, I saw some really, really interesting things there.
I saw communities that had created for the first time outreach teams and support teams inrural communities that were using kind of
better data, they were able to identify who was experiencing homelessness and when.
And as a result, they were really able to kind of tackle the problem and address the rootcauses.
(09:45):
So it was when I kind of came back with those findings and published them, I connectedwith a lot of different people that were saying, actually, this really resonates with what
I'm seeing.
And one of them is English Rural Housing Association, who kind of work in rural areasacross the south of England.
And they'd been seeing a lot of pressure in their communities and
a lot of people that were at risk of homelessness and falling into homelessness who 10years ago would never have been in that position.
(10:12):
So these kind of threads came together.
People all have their different journeys, but the coalition was kind of formed out of acollective recognition that there was something going on that was concerning and a
resolution that we knew that there were changes that could be made to tackle the problemand kind of end homelessness.
(10:33):
as examples, say from the United States or elsewhere showed, so yeah, it was, it was, it,it, it was a period of, of kind of, you know, kind of intense collaboration.
and it kind of came out of very, very high and worrying levels of needs.
and, you know, as a result, we were able to kind of create something that brought togethera diverse range of people with that shared commitment.
(10:58):
You said that, one of the things that interested you about
the data from America was that rural homelessness was treated as a distinct category.
So in your mind, in your view, is that justified?
Is rural homelessness different from other types of homelessness?
(11:21):
And if so, from your experience, how is rural homelessness a different type ofhomelessness?
It's a really good question.
And I think when
when we kind of talk about homelessness and the different types of homelessness, it'sreally important to also start with what is shared, which is that there's a common
experience of homelessness and it always comes down in some way to the absence ofappropriate housing, right?
(11:50):
So I think you have to start with a kind of common shared understanding.
However, it can be useful to look at the differences of people's experiences.
because it allows you to kind of target your interventions to look at where we're failingand where particular groups are falling through the net.
So whether that's youth homelessness, which has its own kind of causes and drivers in somecases, whether that's homelessness affecting other groups that just kind of LGBT
(12:19):
communities, actually, when you kind of apply this lens, you're more able to identify
failings that are specific to particular groups and communities.
And rural homelessness is, is similar in many ways to that.
It doesn't mean that it needs its own entire approach.
It doesn't mean the experience is completely different, but it does mean that there areparticular things and particular challenges, which need to be overcome.
(12:48):
to answer your question about what those challenges are and what the difference is.
think the first one is, is, is isolation.
So if I take the example of one of our advocates who has done a lot of work with thecoalition, a guy called Frank who was experiencing homelessness in the southeast of
(13:13):
England, just actually just outside Worthing.
And he was camping in the woods there for over a year.
And he was there because he felt that the town centers were dangerous.
He didn't feel safe there.
(13:34):
He felt like he'd come off the back of evictions.
He couldn't hold down housing as a result.
And he kind of went into the woods and tried to be kind of self -sufficient there.
And his story is quite remarkable because of how he didn't interact with any services.
(13:54):
barely in that time, you he would occasionally go to perhaps a kind of day center or foodbank, but the way he talks about it, he did feel really, really isolated from that
support.
Whereas if you're in a more urban environment and you're rough sleeping, you're much morelikely to come across an outreach worker, a support worker.
And there can be challenges with getting that support, but you're much more likely to havethose interactions in rural areas, you're not because the services just aren't there.
(14:24):
And that was a really isolating experience.
And it actually took the provision of support and a kind of a particular interaction witha charity called Turning Tides for Frank to kind of be connected with the support he
needed to find long -term housing, which he ended up doing.
But that took much, much longer than you would hope, especially for somebody who, youknow, clearly kind of...
(14:50):
was looking for that support and looking for that opportunity to kind of find long termhousing.
So the differences are often about the lack of services, the isolation people see andexperience.
There are also differences often around stigma in rural communities.
We often hear kind of reports that it's much harder to kind of provide services, attitudesperhaps are sometimes more hostile.
(15:20):
flip side is that sometimes there is a kind of shared sense of community that you can tapinto, which provides effective support for individuals like Frank.
So it's definitely complex.
But when you when it kind of, you know, you look at it.
The reason why I think it's important to look at rural homelessness through that lens isbecause it allows us to challenge the idea it's just something that happens in urban
(15:49):
areas.
And that's important to build support for more affordable housing, more social housing.
We often don't hear a conversation around social housing in rural areas, but theunaffordability of rural areas is really, really acute.
So it allows us to kind of make the case for that.
It allows us to identify that we need services in these communities because the need isthere, even if it's less visible.
(16:12):
So for all those reasons, it's useful to single out these experiences.
It doesn't mean that you need a completely different approach in rural areas.
It doesn't mean that urban homelessness is any less of an issue.
It absolutely is.
So these lenses just allow us to see things in more depth and richness than we otherwisewould.
And that's great.
Thank you, Rory.
(16:33):
On your website, there are some statistics about homelessness in Britain and ruralhomelessness.
Can you share with us what some of these are?
Yeah, of course.
the first thing is when you're
kind of counting homelessness, it's already quite tricky to do.
And it's particularly difficult in rural areas for all the reasons I've said.
So any statistics we have are often a kind of an undercount and there'll be people thataren't presenting for support and aren't found.
(17:01):
But if you look at kind of one of the definitions of homelessness, which is statutoryhomelessness, so that's people that are presenting to their council and they're found to
have some kind of need and the council has an obligation to provide support to thatindividual.
In that case, were 24 ,000 people according to the campaign to protect rural England whoexperienced homelessness in rural areas in 2022 -23.
(17:27):
And that's been a significant increase compared to five years ago.
If you look at rough sleeping, that's seen an increase of 24 % in that year, 2022 -23.
So an increase on the previous year.
When it comes to rough sleeping on a single night,
from the snapshot figures we have, you're looking at several hundred people.
(17:49):
But we know from the other research we've done that that is a significant underestimationof the level of needs in these communities.
The other thing that's interesting is when you look at levels of rough sleeping, say, on awhat they call a per capita basis, so the proportion of people that are rough sleeping in
rural areas, actually you often see areas like Bedford, Boston,
(18:14):
North Devon with rates of rough sleeping that are higher than Leeds or Norwich or someareas of London.
actually the proportion of people in rural areas that are rough sleeping, according tothese stats, often is a kind of at least as high as the more urban areas.
So clearly there is a real crisis here, one that's increased.
(18:40):
But we really need, you know, kind of
commitment to kind of better data.
You know, what you count has an effect on what you create and what you target, which iswhy we're so keen to increase our approaches to better counting and better data to ensure
everyone's found and that we can have a solution for everybody.
(19:00):
Thank you.
In July of this year, during rural housing week, you celebrated your first anniversary asa coalition.
Congratulations.
What are some of the successes that you've had during your first year?
Thanks.
And yeah, it was great to kind of have that moment.
(19:22):
I think overall, our overall success has been really putting rural homelessness in thekind of mainstream conversation around homelessness, which is something we've always
wanted.
We don't want it to be a of a niche issue or something off at the sides.
We just want kind of everybody in the space to be thinking about
the diversity of all of our communities when we are tackling homelessness, whether that'skind of government, whether that's the media.
(19:46):
So I think our successes are when we've been able to bring that contribution to bear.
whether that's, know, we've had a lot of great media coverage, kind of national newspackages on some of the stories and the testimony of individuals who've experienced
homelessness in rural areas.
So that's been a real success.
we've brought our findings to conferences where we've had a lot of coverage there too.
(20:12):
But I think most crucially, we're really engaging with government on the issue.
And through a piece of work we did on what local authorities can do to better adoptpractices to tackle rural rough sleeping, we saw lots of local authorities use that to
inform their homelessness strategies and to have that recognition.
(20:34):
that rural homelessness is something that should be considered, not just homelessness inthe more urban areas.
So all of those things together have kind of had a real impact.
And we were really pleased and proud to be receiving an affordable housing awards for kindof campaign of the year, which we received a few months ago as a kind of recognition of
(20:59):
this awareness raising work.
But really, we want to be in a place in which we don't need to be doing this because thisconversation is just part and parcel.
And I think we're moving towards that point, which is really welcome to say.
Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
Well done.
(21:19):
You mentioned just briefly there your rough sleeping guide that you've made available tolocal authorities across the country.
Can you just tell us a little bit more about that in detail?
Just in case, I'm sure some listeners will be interested and you might even have sort ofcounty councillors listening in as well who may not be aware of this.
So what can you tell us about that?
(21:39):
Definitely.
So it's a piece of work that we developed with a group of people working in localgovernment who worked in rural areas and had housing or homelessness responsibilities.
And with them, we developed a set of kind of best practice to explore improving roughsleeping offers in rural areas.
And there were, I guess, a few themes that I'll pull out.
(22:01):
And this very much came from the local authorities as well as ourselves.
The first is our approach to outreach in rural areas.
So when it comes to kind of services which go out and find and identify people who arerough sleeping, in rural areas, you need to take slightly different approaches to the
model.
So you have to take a more kind of community referral -based approach.
(22:24):
There's an increased role for technology.
to kind of expand where you can reach and get into more remote areas.
There's often a need to not have such high barriers to people being what they say isverified as rough sleeping.
So often to get support, someone needs to be seen rough sleeping.
It's much harder in rural areas to do that.
(22:46):
So it requires a more flexible approach to that barrier.
And then an awareness that people can get that support.
there was another theme around kind of using better data.
So as I mentioned, data collection in rural areas being really key.
And then working to use methods such as the women's rough sleeping census, which is a newapproach, which means that you count homelessness by bringing together a broader range of
(23:16):
partners who might be at the spot where people are homeless, but wouldn't otherwise becounted.
So whether that's like,
perhaps local farmer or whether that's local post office, these kind of groups that mayhave knowledge and expertise around what people are experiencing in the rural area, but
who usually aren't involved in these conversations.
(23:36):
It's kind of bringing those people in the conversation too.
And then finally, you know, an emphasis on sort of partnering with more urban areas tokind of learn from what they've done and to kind of share information across the
boundaries of local authority areas.
That came through as a...
as a real theme, more integrated approaches, working better with health.
(23:59):
These are all kind of ways in which we can ensure that services are spotting when peopleare experiencing homelessness and making the right interventions at the right time.
And the work's been really helpful as a first step in starting to identify how we take anapproach in these rural areas where to date, it's been just difficult for people to kick
(24:20):
off these conversations because
there's not been a view that it's a problem that needs tackling and now that is startingto shift.
Yeah, that's great.
You've also started doing a feasibility study into rural housing first.
What are you hoping to achieve with this study?
Yeah, so you listed as maybe familiar with housing first, which is a model of support forpeople with experience of homelessness, which says that the most important thing is to
(24:48):
provide housing in the first instance.
that housing should be non -conditional.
They shouldn't have to pass a series of tests or demonstrate a level of readiness for thathousing.
And it also provides really intensive support.
So that individual may have had very difficult traumatic experiences.
It provides the housing with the wraparound support, like your own roof over your head isthe principle.
(25:12):
And it's really evidence -based, but that evidence is from rural areas, sorry, from urbanareas.
And...
what we wanted to do was to explore whether the model will work in the same way in ruralareas, because there aren't examples of Housing First being delivered at scale in rural
communities.
we've been talking to people who have been trying to do this work.
(25:35):
So an organization in Dorset who provide some units of Housing First in rural Dorset andthe kind of results speak for themselves in terms of the fact that people have kind of
been rough sleeping for years, but then come off the street and are able to live in thecommunity that they grew up in and able to have that long term stable accommodation with
(26:00):
support and not return to rough sleeping is a real testament.
And we know that often people won't want to kind of be in the cities.
They might not be from the city or they may in some cases be from the city, but they wantto kind of escape that environment, which is maybe associated with
trauma and harm and difficult relationships.
And this is why having a model of housing, which is available in rural areas as well asurban is so important because it respects the choice of the individual.
(26:30):
It respects the individual's kind of history and their connections to their community, alltheir desire for a fresh start.
And these things kind of come together to really underscore why a rural housing firstoffer.
could be quite transformative.
And that's what we're exploring in this study at the moment, whether we think that'sviable, and if so, how we get it off the ground.
(26:52):
I was just about to ask you how would that get off the ground, you're still exploringthat.
So that's fair enough.
So yeah, that's really interesting, actually.
So I do hope to see the results of that study when it comes out.
So thank you for doing that.
You've also got a community of practice, a rural homelessness community of practice.
(27:18):
Can you just explain what that is and how that works?
Yeah, I guess it's a bit of a technical phrase, but essentially what it is is gettingpeople in a room with a shared interest and shared expertise in facing up to the
homelessness crisis in rural communities and get those people in a room.
(27:39):
get them talking to one another, which sounds incredibly simple, but often is somethingwhich we've not done in the past.
Many people are working in their community to tackle their issue and they can feel quiteisolated.
They can feel like they don't know what other people are doing in other parts of thecountry, what's working for them, what's not working.
So the whole idea behind this was to work with Homeless Link, who are a membership bodythat represent a lot of different
(28:05):
homeless service providers.
I the ferry project is one of their members.
And it's to get groups like the ferry project and the fantastic work that the ferryproject does into contact with other providers who maybe are operating in rural areas, but
they're much earlier on in their journey.
(28:26):
And they want to learn from the things you've done, having been here for 25 years.
It's getting those, those kind of almost those mentoring relationships, that informationsharing, that idea sharing.
and from that, I think you can really start to spread great practice across the country.
(28:48):
and it's much better if that comes from someone that's done it.
That has the experience that if someone's just kind of telling you to do it because youshould do it.
So it's bringing those people together, having those conversations.
And in a way, you know, this podcast and what you're doing with this series is a kind ofform of this approach because it's shining a light on experiences.
(29:09):
It's increasing understanding and dialogue.
And as a result, the hope is that people will adopt things and take actions.
So these connections are really key and something we've been prioritizing and thecommunity of practices is a kind of latest initiative to, to encourage that work.
how, how would an organization or someone be able to
(29:30):
access this community of practice.
How does someone get put in touch with a group or know when people are meeting in a roomto discuss these things and then be invited along?
How can people get in on this?
Yeah, I mean we've got a mailbox that we always welcome if people want to kind of get moreinvolved, which I'm sure we can share with yourself and listeners.
(29:56):
you know, we are, we're really open.
If you're working in providing services or support in rural areas for people experiencinghomelessness, then this could be a good space and initiative to join.
So we'd really welcome that.
And we can, we can share those, those details, of course, because yeah, there's a lot ofstrength in people kind of coming together from, from, different places and different
(30:19):
experiences.
And we're, we're, know we're kind of just at the start of this journey.
So we definitely welcome that.
So what would the first step be?
Someone going on your website and finding the contact us page or something like that?
Yeah, that's right.
So we've got English rural.
If you go on the English rural website, we have a page on the rural homelessnesscoalition.
(30:41):
You'll be able to find contact details on that website.
So that would be the first step.
And then looking to be kind of put on the mailing list for the coalition would be yourfirst step to get more involved, to hear about what we do.
and then possibly join forums like the Community of Practice if that's something that's ofinterest as well.
(31:02):
That's great, thank you.
And what I'll be doing is I'll be putting a link to that page in this episode's show notesas well so that listeners who are interested can find that really easily.
Just before we come to an end, Rory, what are some of your hopes for the future of thecoalition?
In the years to come, what are some of your...
(31:25):
hopes and dreams and aspirations.
So it's a funny one, but I think one of my main hopes is that we don't have to do thiswork anymore.
Yeah.
I would love to be in a position where homelessness has the public recognition, thepolitical recognition that it needs and deserves.
(31:51):
And that as part of that, there's a real deep understanding of what homelessness is andthe fact it
It happens everywhere across all of our communities.
It doesn't just happen to one type of person.
It can happen to any of us.
Certain people are at increased risk of it, but it really does happen everywhere.
And it's all of our problem to fix.
(32:12):
So I think my hope would be that, you know, we've got, for example, we've got a newgovernment in power at the moment.
They have a commitment to a new strategy, cross government and homelessness.
We don't have any details on that yet.
But if I'm being optimistic and if I'm saying what I hope to happen over the next fewyears, you know, I hope we really use this as an opportunity for a reset where we have a
(32:35):
serious strategy to end homelessness, which includes building the genuinely affordablehousing across the country where it's needed, including in rural communities.
And that that housing is affordable to people that are at risk of homelessness.
Secondly, that we have
the kind of investment in local authorities that we know is essential and that we have apartnership with the voluntary sector and others to kind of harness those expertise and
(33:05):
the goodwill of communities to address the root cause of homelessness, which is providingaffordable housing, providing the kind of support services, whether that's mental health,
whether that's addressing people's kind of needs and providing skills and training.
And then also that our welfare system and our social security system also provides theadequate safety net that people need.
(33:30):
These are all the kind of measures that if we have them in place, then we will tackle thecrisis of rural homelessness and urban alike.
And then there won't be a need to be doing as much campaigning and advocacy.
So, you know, we're not going to turn this around overnight by any means.
And I don't think we're close to the point where, you know,
(33:52):
we kind of hang up our gloves as a sector at all.
But my real aspiration is that that endpoint at least feels in sight, where we can atleast see a world that feels a little bit more visible to us, where we don't need to be
doing what we're doing anymore, because our society values people and values the role ofhousing and support.
(34:18):
enough that no one is at risk of the kind of dangers and indignity of homelessness.
That's fantastic.
Well Rory, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today on the Rural Homelessness podcast.
It's been fascinating getting insights into what you and the Rural Homelessness CountsCoalition are doing.
(34:39):
So thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you for joining us.
Great, thanks.
It's been great to be here.
and thank you as well for listening to this episode of the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
Don't forget an episode comes out twice a month on the 1st and on the 15th.
So I do hope to have the pleasure of your company again on another episode of the RuralHomelessness Podcast.
(35:02):
Thanks for listening.
See you soon.
Goodbye.
Thank you for listening to the Rural Homelessness Podcast brought to you by The FerryProject.
Visit our website
on www .ferryproject .org .uk
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