The Prince of Wales said he wants his ambitious project to end homelessness to move from a niche endeavour to the mainstream as he unveiled a new partnership with a High Street bank. William’s Homewards initiative is attempting to develop a blueprint to make homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated” – and has now joined forces with Lloyds Banking Group, which has made £50 million available to organisations tackling the issue.
Small and medium-sized housing providers and charities working in the six locations Homewards is targeting, and who struggle to secure financial support from lenders, will have access to the funds. The prince visited an 11-bed housing scheme in Poole for people with mental health issues, run by Bournemouth Churches Housing Association (BCHA), to mark the tie-up with Lloyds Banking Group – and was joined by the lender’s chief executive officer Charlie Nunn.
During a discussion with Mr Nunn and representatives from BCHA and the local authority, the prince said: “We really want to move Homewards from being a niche thing – people have started to live with homelessness for a long time and it’s become a niche thing – try and make it more mainstream. so people understand it and they get it.
