Month 1 of our 2024-25 Night Shelter Season: Frontline Insights

Glass Door Homeless Charity has been operating emergency winter night shelters for over 20 years. We run the UK's largest network of open access winter night shelters for people experiencing homelessness. 

Our winter night shelters opened on 4th November, and will operate seven nights a week until 6th April. 

Like all of our services, our night shelters are run on an open access basis. This means that no matter who you are or where you come from, you can turn to us for support. We run three night shelter circuits – one in Kensington and Chelsea, one in Hammersmith and Fulham, and one in Wandsworth. 

For the second year running, our shelters are split between a mixed-gender circuit, men’s circuit and women’s circuit, and we’re also holding a weekly women’s drop-in casework session that supports our women’s shelter guests. 

Each circuit offers up to 35 people a safe place to sleep each night, as well as a hot dinner and breakfast the next morning, and access to our casework service. 

We're now one month into our 2024-25 night shelter season. This is what we've seen so far: 

• 727 people have been referred to our shelters 

• 257 guests have stayed in the shelters, of whom: 

• 65% have been men and 35% women 

• 86% were previously sleeping rough 

• The youngest was 19 and the oldest 78. The most common age categories were 50-69 (33% of guests), followed by 21-34 (32% of guests) and 35-49 (31%). 

• The average length of stay in the shelters has been 10.8 days 

• 128 shelter guests have engaged with our caseworkers, of whom 8 have already been moved towards more permanent housing, 8 have received financial support and 4 have been connected to health services. 

After just two weeks of our shelters being open, temperatures fell to zero degrees for the first time this winter, leading the Greater London Authority to trigger its Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP), which meant that additional emergency accommodation opened up. This also led Glass Door to activate our own Emergency Cold Weather Policy, meaning that we increased our capacity to up to 40 people each night for each circuit.  

We have seen such a great demand for night shelter spots that, just over three weeks after the shelters opened, we had to temporarily close referrals for men. 

With temperatures dropping, our shelters are needed more than ever, and we expect demand to continue to be worryingly high as the winter goes on. 

Stay tuned for updates every month.  

You can support the work we do by donating to our Christmas Appeal. Every donation helps us support Londoners experiencing or facing homelessness. 

Watch our film about our night shelters

Watch our brand new shelter film to find out how we support our guests every winter. 

This year, to support our ongoing efforts to spotlight our Winter Night Shelters, we worked with a filmmaker to create a film that gives further insight into our services. The film brings together members of the Glass Door team and some of our incredible volunteers, offering you a sneak peek into our night shelters. Thank you to all our staff, volunteers and guests who contributed their time to creating and being in the film, and helped bring our night shelters to life.