The story behind the fund

Following the success of Resonance’s pioneering impact property fund Real Lettings Property Fund 1 (RLPF1) with housing partner St Mungo’s Real Lettings, in providing stable homes for people in London facing housing crisis, National Homelessness Property Fund 1 (NHPF1) was created. NHPF1 launched in December 2015 to provide decent and affordable homes for people facing homelessness in three other cities in England: Bristol, Oxford and Milton Keynes.

NHPF1 raised £43.6m from socially motivated investors to buy a portfolio of 229 homes across these three cities and has fully deployed.

Working with the local authorities in these three areas, NHPF1 houses people in Bristol, Oxford and Milton Keynes facing homelessness in stable, private tenancies without deposits. After buying each of the 229 properties the fund refurbished all of them to a high standard, including making them more energy efficient, helping to reduce some bills for tenants.

Real Lettings is the social lettings service and social enterprise set up by St Mungo’s to help provide homes for vulnerably housed and homeless people. It manages the tenancies and supports tenants, working with other partners to help them access support services, become part of local communities and feel settled. Rent from the properties, a large proportion of which comes from Local Housing Allowance, pays St Mungo’s and Resonance, and provides a yield to the investors.

Providing decent, stable and affordable housing is enabling individuals and families to be moved out of inappropriate and temporary accommodation such as B&Bs and hostels. And having a settled home is enabling tenants to become more independent, linking stable housing to positive development in other parts of their lives, such as resilience to homelessness, helping them improve their longer term housing options and take steps towards employment and – with almost as many children as adults being housed by the fund – making a huge difference to them, more likely to lead to more positive outcomes and to reach their full potential.

Across our five homelessness property funds capital raised was £243m as of March 2022, enabling the purchase of 935 properties so far. And in the last year, these homes housed 2,091 people, including 1,009 children

To date across all Resonance’s homelessness property funds around 3,000 people have been housed in over 1,000 homes.

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