The LSE Homelessness Initiative

The LSEHI’s mission is to empower the LSE community to play a meaningful, active and leading role in alleviating homelessness in the local community and supporting efforts to end homelessness in society.

It aims to do this whilst ensuring that:

• Our activities exist, first and foremost, to help people experiencing homelessness and/or to help advance work that will end homelessness in society
• Our activities offer opportunities for both student and staff involvement
• Our activities are, wherever possible, informed by those with a lived experience of homelessness
• Students and staff are given space to innovate, initiate and lead on homelessness projects
• LSE’s approach to homelessness in and around its campus is undertaken with sensitivity and compassion

In November 2024, we launched the LSEHI Activity Fund, a pilot opportunity for members of our staff and student community to submit their idea for a project focused on understanding and tackling homelessness and receive up to £3,000 in funding.

The fund is currently closed to new applications and we are supporting five projects which include a mixture research and events, some of which involve collaborations with external organisations and charities, many of which are directly relevant to LSE as an institution and our community, and all of which will drive our understanding of homelessness and what we can do as individuals, communities and societies, to tackle it.

To find out more about the projects we've funded, click here.

On 27 February 2025, we hosted a panel event in collaboration with the Hackney Migrant Centre titled 'An evening with the housing sector: reflections on the structural and systemic barriers facing migrants accessing housing in the UK'. 

On 7 November 2024, LSEHI supported our Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion in organising and hosting a panel discussion on youth homelessness in London and why this specific issue needs its own solution.

It was chaired by Dr Tania Burchardt and featured SU President Tito Molokuwu, CASE Research Officer Ellie Benton, Alicia Walker from Shelter and Meghan Roach of the New Horizon Youth Centre. You can watch the event and read more about the research it was based on here.

On 7 February 2024, LSEHI helped promote research conducted by Dr Michela Tinelli in our Care Policy and Evaluation Centre in collaboration with King’s College London. Dr Tinelli and her team have developed an innovative management dashboard for use by local authorities to help them better understand and meet demand for homelessness services. We also supported the organisation of an event to further develop the dashboard, which involved representatives from local authorities, commissioning boards and the charity sector. 

On 15 November 2023, we worked with the Volunteer Centre to organise a Take Action seminar on homelessness. This was led by Professor Christine Whitehead (LSE London) and representatives from two homelessness charities, The Connection at St Martin’s and Amurt UK.

On 17 October 2023, we organised a panel event called Homelessness in London in a Time of Crisis for a discussion of the scale, consequences and solutions to homelessness in London. A 200+ person audience heard from Professor Christine Whitehead, Dr Jennifer Wynter (Hackney Council), Pam Orchard (The Connection at St Martin’s) and Maria-Christina Vogkli (LSE, R&I).

This event was chaired by Dr Nancy Holman (LSE London), moderated by Manny Hothi of Trust For London and co-hosted by LSE London and the LSE Executive Office.  

So far, the total Raised from Staff and Student Fundraising Initiatives, including Christmas donations and the Donate your Commute campaign among others, was £16,044. More recently, at the LSE Christmas concert, £530 was raised and donated to St Mungo’s.

In 2020, Professor Christine Whitehead undertook a Rapid Review of issues around the “Recourse to Public Funds” policy for the Kerslake Commission Review of the government’s Everyone In campaign of 2020. This was published as part of the Kerslake Commissions report and can be found on the LSE London website here.

We have organised various events to raise awareness, including the Take Action seminars and blog, social media engagement and highlighting numerous volunteering opportunities for students to work with homelessness and food poverty charities like St Mungo’s.

We've also supported the delivery of tailored, in-person training on how to support rough sleepers and homeless people to all LSE Security staff operating on campus. This is being repeated for new staff intake and expanded to include security staff in halls of residence.

We're proud to support our student societies and the charitable work they and their members do around homelessness, with examples including:

• Working with the LSE Student Unions' fundraising arm, RAG, to raise money for the charity St Mungo’s.
• Working with the LSE Islamic Society to organise a soup kitchen
• Working with the charities Oxfam and SoloHaus to organise an event about initiatives for building houses for homeless people.
• Working with the LSE Athletics Union to organise a tube stop walk to raise awareness and gather donations for homelessness. 
• Working with the LSE Hindu society to organise an event with Project Giving to serve food to the homeless