Calculating the Costs of Funding a Safe Place to Sleep
When charities apply for funding through our grants programmes, they tell us the number of bedspaces they would expect our funding to create, as well as the number of young people they’d expect to find a safe place to sleep through these bedspaces. These numbers (bedspaces created and young people supported) are sometimes different because, depending on the type of project, a single bedspace might support multiple young people over its lifetime.
Using the below calculations, we’re able to build up a picture of the “typical” costs involved in creating a bedspace and supporting a young person through our various grant programmes.
Of course, there is no such thing as a typical bedspace – whilst we have broken down these costs by grants programme to increase the similarity between projects in a calculation, there is still a large variation in costs of individual projects, costs by region, etc. Whilst this figure offers some insight, then, into the costs involved in working towards our strategy, no one project is the same and our Grants team are responsive to the individual needs of each project when evaluating applications.
Safe Places Programme
Bedspaces in the Safe Places Programme generally refer to volunteer host households which are available as same-night provision for young people in urgent need of accommodation – LandAid grants through this programme would fund recruitment campaigns for these hosts, for example. As emergency accommodation, bedspaces are generally short term: a young person might stay with a DePaul Nightstop host, for instance, from anywhere between one night and six weeks. Based on the projects we’ve funded, a typical Safe Places bedspace will support two young people over the course of time that the host household participates.
£1,100
(£1,107.06)
Cost per Young Person Supported (Safe Places Programme)
£2,200
(£2,214.12)
Cost per Bedspace (Safe Places Programme)
Capital Grants Programme
The Capital Grants Programme funds the renovation and construction of supported accommodation bedspaces. On average, a single bedspace will support one young person per year. As capital grants are awarded under the condition of a minimum of 8 years of youth homelessness provision, we can say that an average capital bedspace will support 8 young people over the course of its minimum lifespan.
In addition, to the cost per bedspace and per young person supported, we can determine the cost per bedspace per night/week/month. As our capital grants are awarded under the condition of a minimum of 8 years of youth homelessness provision, we can calculate this by dividing the total cost of a bedspace by the number of nights/weeks/months covered, using this conservative estimate of 8 years. It should be noted that this cost only takes into account the capital funding by LandAid – it doesn’t take into account the staff and upkeep costs needed to run such accommodation.
£5
(£4.90)
Cost per bedspace per night (Capital Grants Programme)
£34
(£34.32)
Cost per bedspace per week (Capital Grants Programme)
£152
(£151.97)
Cost per bedspace per month (Capital Grants Programme)
£1,800
(£1,789.32)
Cost per Young Person Supported (Capital Grants Programme)
£14,300
(£14,314.56)
Cost per Bedspace (Capital Grants Programme)
Move-On Grants
Bedspaces in the Move-On Programme refer to a home secured in the private rental sector for a young person, through a grant-funded deposit, for example. As such, a Move-On bedspace will generally support just one individual onto a 12-month (minimum) tenancy, though the intention of securing such a tenancy is to provide much longer-term stability that cannot be reduced to that 12-month period. The cost per bedspace is therefore the same as the cost per young person supported.
£1,850
(£1,835.31)
Cost per Bedspace/Young Person supported (Move-On Grants Programme)