An Open Letter to the Prime Minister, and to Everyone Who Wants to End Street Homelessness

Dear Prime Minister,

We welcomed your first instruction on entering Downing Street: to end rough sleeping in our country. It is the right ambition, and the £340m committed to housing and support is a serious start. You have said you reject the idea that this can't be done. So do we, because we've spent years doing part of it.

We are here.

Change Please is a UK social enterprise that trains people who have experienced homelessness to become baristas, pays them a real living wage, and supports them into secure housing, bank accounts, mental health care and long-term work. We do it across the UK, Ireland, France, the US and Australia, through coffee sold in offices, cafés and homes around the world. It is a working model, tested at scale, and it is running as we write this.

A home matters. So does a reason to get up in the morning.

Housing is the foundation, and 1,200 new homes will change lives. But accommodation alone rarely holds. What keeps people off the streets for good is a job - income, routine, dignity, a sense of being needed. An employability-first approach, where work and housing are delivered together rather than in sequence, is what turns a night indoors into a life rebuilt. That is the piece we've learned the most about, often the hard way, and it is the piece we most want to share.

This is where public and private can meet.

Government can fund homes and support. Business can offer training, jobs and supply chains. Individuals can offer time, custom and a willingness to look someone in the eye. Change Please exists precisely at that junction, a bridge between public ambition and private capacity, with a job at the centre of it. The lesson of the last decade is that no single sector ends homelessness alone, and pledges made in isolation are the ones that slip.

So let's do something about it, and let's do it now.

To local authorities: talk to us about how an employment-first model can sit alongside your housing plans.
To businesses: pour our coffee, hire our graduates, open a route into your workforce.
To individuals: buy a cup, share this letter, or ask how you can help.

We are not asking you to agree with everything or wait for a five-year plan to conclude. We are asking you to reach out. We've made the mistakes, kept the receipts, and we'll share everything we know, freely, with anyone serious about doing this properly.

Get in touch by sending us a message. 

With hope and hard-won experience,

On behalf of everyone at Change Please