Is Shelter a charity?

Or is it a commercial enterprise, a sub-contractor to government or a left-wing pressure group financed by the general public?

The answer to all of these is yes. In the year to March 2017 Shelter received £2.1m from legal services contracts, and £2.5m from advising advisers on behalf of the government:

“Shelter received £2,494,000 in funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government to deliver the National Homelessness Advice Service to Local Authorities, Citizens Advice in England, and other local and national voluntary advice organisations. The overall aims of the project are to enable frontline providers to deliver good quality housing and homelessness advice, and support and facilitate the prevention of homelessness where possible.”

However, does it provide shelter? No, it’s not that kind of charity.

Let Shelter explain what it spends your money on:

“What we do

Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help (emphasis added)”. Click here

But does Shelter do good works? You can’t tell from the accounts. These are opaque, and just divide the expenditure into vague headings. In the year to March 2017 it spent £33.2 million on “Housing advice and support”. It doesn’t give a sub-total, you have to add the items up yourself, but you will scour the annual report in vain for what they mean by support.

The expenditure under “Housing advice and support” is made up of:

Shelter received £17.9m for this from the government, Local Authorities, the lottery and other agencies.  The other £19.1m was financed by donations and legacies and so was the £5.9m that was spent on Research, Policy and Campaigning.

People who donate or bequeath money to Shelter thinking it will house someone are in fact paying for the new management’s campaign of harassment of letting agents and its lobbying in support of legislation that will drive private landlords out of the market, reducing the supply of rented housing.

What irony.