YMCA Cheltenham announce £6.4M Supported Housing scheme in Gloucester

YMCA Cheltenham is delighted to be progressing with a large £6.4M Supported Housing scheme in Gloucester as part of its innovative and unique PATHWAY HOME delivery.

Supported by Homes England, to the value of £4.8M, Ermin Hall (former university student accommodation) will provide 35 x cluster bedrooms, including 2 x accessible bedrooms, 8 x self-contained studios, plus 6 x one-bed flats, including 1 x accessible flat.

PATHWAY HOME is an approach to Supported Housing that is entirely person-centred and built to allow dignity and growth for that individual – to allow people to understand their own potential in society and reach out for it – and to allow people to find hope in a future that they thought may have otherwise been lost.

Selected by Homes England to be a national case study, this scheme will broaden and deepen the extraordinary work being delivered by our staff teams, achieving 84% positive move on-rates for PATHWAY HOME participants and a tenancy failure rate of 0.5% for all those graduating from our supported accommodation so far.

We are also going to be further developing our offering to children and families over the next 2 years, and Ermin Hall will become an important part of this agenda.

At our 169^th AGM, Joseph R. Main, CEO, stated, “There is no doubt that a number of the people we support who suffer significantly poor mental health or drug and alcohol addiction, suffered trauma in their lives when they were younger – most will have experienced some form of adverse childhood experience.

YMCA Cheltenham is, today, providing accommodation for children whose families are facing the trauma and adverse experience of homelessness – we are supporting children who have experienced violence in the home and witnessed the collapse of their family, who do not have enough to eat, who do not have their own bed in which to sleep.

We are – therefore – in the near-unique position to start breaking down the generational cycles of disadvantage, exclusion and loss that have led so many adults to our doors to date…”