Prince William will deliver a major speech today (Image: Getty)
The Prince of Wales will say “homelessness is not an individual failure” but a “systemic failure” as he marks three years of his Homewards project today. At a celebration event on Tuesday, William will highlight how his five-year project, aimed at proving it is possible to make homelessness rare, brief and unrepeated, is already helping thousands of people access stable homes, jobs, and support before they reach a crisis point.
The prince will outline how Homewards has secured the support of businesses such as Specsavers, Nando’s, Ikea and Lloyds Banking Group; with £1.9 million invested in prevention through the Homewards Fund and an additional £3.5 million leveraged through grants and private philanthropy.
William is expected to say: “Homelessness is not an individual failure; it is a systemic failure. And, if systems help create the problem, then systems can also help prevent it. By trialling new approaches, Homewards is demonstrating how prevention can be embedded across every part of our society. Proving that our true strength emerges not in isolation, but in a shared purpose that makes us greater than the sum of our parts.”
The celebration event today will be hosted by Radio 1 DJ Dean McCullough and will be attended by one of his sporting heroes, Aston Villa centre-back Tyrone Mings, who has been an advocate for Homewards since its inception, TV presenter Gail Porter and renowned homelessness expert Baroness Louise Casey.
The event also brings together partners, businesses and people with lived experience to highlight emerging solutions.
William launched Homewards in June 2023 to show that homelessness can be prevented when we work together.
It is working with six flagship locations in the UK, bringing together local leaders, businesses, delivery organisations and people with lived experience to design and deliver solutions tailored to each place.
It aims to create a tried and tested model for preventing homelessness that can be scaled across the UK and beyond.
Prince William visited a homeless shelter with his mother (Image: The Passage/PA)
Three years in, more than 2400 people are now being supported so that homelessness never becomes part of their lives. There are more than 70 individuals and families in stable homes and over 250 people supported into employment.
These results stem from a deliberate shift towards prevention, expanding the frontline of support beyond traditional services and working with schools, employers, and healthcare professionals to enable them to step in sooner.
Over the last year, Homewards has moved from testing ideas to putting large-scale partnerships in place, including a £2.3 million furniture collaboration with The Multibank, DfS, Bosch Home Appliances, IKEA and B&Q to help furnish Homewards homes and the creation of The Homelessness Data Lab, which brings together over 25 partners to explore how data and technology can help identify risk earlier.
As Homewards enters its final stage, William will outline the project’s next aim: scale.
He is expected to say today: “The next two years are about proving that what works in six locations can work across the country.”
The plan is to focus on scaling solutions with the greatest potential, creating a model that can be applied across the UK and internationally.
William is heavily involved with his Homewards Project, shown by his frequent visits to each of the pilot locations, and when asked what her meetings are like with the Prince, Hazel Destiny, the Executive Director of Homelessness at the Royal Foundation, described them as “punchy”.
“The question that the prince always asks me is ‘How will we know this has worked at the end of five years and how will we know it’s worked for long-term change?’
“If we start to change the culture, if people across the whole society think differently, act differently, work together, feel optimistic, then that will also be part of that sustainable long-term change that will spread to other places.”
William has been interested in tackling homelessness for decades, ever since his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, began discussing it with him as a child.
She later took him and his younger brother, Prince Harry, to visit a homeless shelter to deepen their understanding of homelessness.