Resonance has made another investment from its Bristol Social Investment Tax Relief Fund of £112,500 to Social Impact Bristol Ltd, a consortium set up by three charities – St Mungo’s, Second Step and Bristol Drug Project to deliver an innovative social enterprise initiative helping rough sleepers, commissioned by Bristol City Council.

The investment enables Social Impact Bristol Ltd, to support 125 people rough sleeping in Bristol over the next three and a half years, aiming to support them off the streets, through providing accommodation and vital support services tailored to each individual’s needs.

Rough sleeping has been a growing problem nationally, and particularly in Bristol where there has been a steady increase in the number of people sleeping rough, especially over the last eighteen months. Many factors may be involved in someone ending up on the streets including individual circumstances such as relationship breakdown, poor mental health, eviction and job loss and social factors such as a lack of affordable and social housing, and changes to national welfare benefits.

This is now the seventh investment from the Resonance Bristol SITR Fund, a pioneering social investment fund, which aims to help dismantle poverty in the region through investing into high impact social enterprises. The Fund continues to raise investment from private individuals who want to back social enterprises and get the benefits of Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR), a recently introduced scheme similar to the popular Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS).

This latest investment from the Fund was combined with additional investments from CAF Venturesome and equity from the three charities to make a total investment of £273,000 into a Social Impact Bond with an overall contract value of £1.25m.  The contract is backed by Bristol City Council and pays out if certain social impact goals for the rough sleepers in the cohort are achieved.

Katalin Juhasz, Investment Manager at Resonance said of the investment “We are very excited to be supporting, Social Impact Bristol Ltd, enabling them to provide a new and innovative support for people sleeping rough, some with the most complex of needs. With all our investments we are helping to tackle major social issues.  Rough sleeping is one such issue, which has been unfortunately growing in the city over recent years. We believe that the consortium of these three charities working together, with their excellent track record of success, will bring about help and positive change to those that are unfortunately, living on Bristol’s streets.”

Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, commented “Despite all the hard work of people across the city the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Bristol continues to rise. This investment from Resonance, enables us to bring together public, private and voluntary sectors to help those that are in desperate need of accommodation and support.”