Who are we?

We’re an award winning social enterprise with a mission to prevent homelessness.

Our vision is that everyone has a safe and secure home. Our mission is to prevent homelessness. Empowering people through group workshops to feel in control of their money and keep their home. Tenants with increased knowledge, skills, confidence and resilience in managing their money are more likely to keep their home. We facilitate these workshops in a way that is collaborative, equal, empathic, democratic, fun, experiential and effective. We draw out the knowledge, skills and resilience that people already have to share across their community and peer group.

Your Own Place CIC is a social enterprise, a company limited by guarantee. This is a place where social impact and commercial realism collide. To succeed and have the most impact we need to balance and get both right. This means we operate across sectors, are open to new ideas and partnerships and keen to reflect and learn from others. Surviving tough times, Covid and more, we remain convinced of the merits of our proven model and continue to seek new ways to have an impact.

Why we exist

Your Own Place was founded in October 2013 to meet a need of people becoming homeless through no fault of their own.  Many people, often under-supported, find getting and sustaining a home understandably difficult. Complexities can range from knowing about what bills to pay to navigating complex financial concepts as well as confronting a range of housing options and then finding the right help when they need it. Confidence, cash and/or connections that many of us take for granted are essential safety nets. When absent, things can go badly wrong very quickly. Your Own Place delivers these very skills for life so that we can improve tenancy access and sustainment, prevent homelessness and ensure everyone can have a safe and secure home.

Where we are today

Your Own Place CIC is a multi-award winning social enterprise creating social impact, putting lived experience at its heart and providing the vital and often missing skills for life through workshops. These are workshops that enable people to navigate the worlds of finance, tenancies and housing. This helps people to access as well as sustain their tenancy, keep their home and to get help. Much, much more than this, our trainees are enabled through our facilitation to name and discover their strengths as a means to future problem solving. Resilience is a true skill for life.

At a time of a Cost of Living and ongoing housing crisis, our groundbreaking, accredited and copyrighted modular workshops ensure people have the financial, tenancy and housing knowledge, skills, resilience, confidence and networks of support to access and sustain their tenancy and home. After our workshops, trainees are better equipped to access a home, avoid debt and rent arrears, feel in control of their money and their housing options as well as navigate future challenges. 

As targeted prevention, ours is the belief that no one should end up homeless and we prefer to work with those where the risk is highest. Despite the gravity of this current crisis, many can be supported to avoid falling over the edge. With 52% of social housing tenants still not knowing what support is available, there is still much to be done.

Our Services

We're an award-winning social enterprise delivering Money, Housing, Tenancy and Cost of Living support to prevent homelessness.