Month 3 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. 

Open access 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, Hammersmith and Fulham, and 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 three months into our 2024-25 night shelter season. These are our latest insights from the frontline:  

• 1,228 people have been referred to our shelters.  

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

• 63% were men, 35% women and 2% prefer to self-describe.  

• 83% were previously sleeping rough.  

• The youngest was 18 and the oldest 78. The most common age categories were 21-34 and 35-49 (32% each of all guests), followed by 50-69 (30%). 

• The average length of stay in the shelters has been 20.1 nights.  

• 275 shelter guests have engaged with our caseworkers, of whom 54 have already been moved towards more permanent housing, 26 have received financial support and 13 have been connected to health services.  

Due to increased demand, we’ve had to close our men’s shelter referrals twice already this season – once in December and for a second time in January. 

On January 2nd, the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) was activated after temperatures in London fell to 0°C, leading to us increasing our night shelter capacity to 40 spaces per night in each circuit.  

You can read our previous blogs from one month and two months into the shelters, and stay tuned for updates every month. 

You can find out more about our shelters by watching our recent shelter film, bringing together members of the Glass Door team and some of our incredible volunteers to offer you a sneak peek into our night shelters: