Greater Change Proves That Small, Low-Barrier Cash Gifts Can Prevent Evictions, Keep Families Housed, and Restore Dignity
Greater Change, a charitable organization in the UK, is helping people exit and avoid entering homelessness with simple, low strings attached, cash donations. The charity says it has paid out a total of £699,000 so far this year to help 403 people with their requests.
Most of the money given out is requested for things like rent deposits, bills, or debt payments that let people catch up on their finances before they lose their homes. It’s proving to be a very effective early intervention strategy that solves minor problems before they turn into major ones.
The Safety Net for Those Without Safety Nets
If you’ve ever been in a tight spot and had to borrow a little money from friends or family to make rent, catch up on bills, or cover an unexpected expense, you’re familiar with how a little money given at the right time can prevent more expensive issues later. Unfortunately, not everyone has someone in their life who could spot them some money, no matter how tight a spot they’re in. That’s where an organization like Greater Change can make a big difference.
Most of the time, it’s a lot cheaper to prevent a person from losing their housing in the first place than it is to try to get them back into housing once they’ve become homeless. It also saves the person a ton of stress and trauma that comes along with losing their housing and enduring the everyday realities of being homeless. And it even prevents NIMBYs from being bothered by seeing poor people in the street, so it’s really a win-win for everyone.
A system of accessible, low-barrier cash donations that you don’t have to jump through a ton of hoops to get is just the thing for filling those needs that would otherwise spiral quickly out of control. That’s exactly what Greater Change is offering.
The Dignity of Choice
Greater Change’s chief executive, Jonathan Tan, has described the charity’s approach like so:
“We’re giving people dignity of choice. Very often, in a homelessness pathway, it feels like it’s things being done to you, and so we’re giving people the ability to make choices about their lives.”
He goes on to say that, “We’re happy to fund anything under the sun as long as it aligns with the individual’s ambitions and helps them to take that next big step out of homelessness.”
That approach allows the charity to stay flexible and responsive to the needs of their community, rather than getting locked into a certain type of assistance, growing rigid, and allowing the available aid to dictate who they can help, rather than the other way around.
This approach is having great results so far, with the charity reporting that over 86% of the people it has helped have moved into stable housing.
Addressing Doubts
Of course, the moment anyone suggests giving money to poor people, a host of preprogrammed objections spring to mind.
Like clockwork, someone will ask if that’s really a good idea, since recipients will “just spend it on drugs or alcohol anyway.”
This response is designed to make people feel virtuous without actually helping. We’ve debunked this myth before, but one more time for the people in the back: it’s ok to give money to homeless people. They overwhelmingly use it to address their most pressing needs at that moment, which is a calculation that only they can make for themselves.
Then there are those who insist that no one should get anything for free, homeless or not, because if they do, people won’t want to work for anything anymore. All I can say to that is, have you ever met a gardener?
People do loads of work for absolutely no monetary reward all the time, and they’re best able to engage in that work when their basic needs are already met. Whether it’s in service of our hobbies or in service to our communities, well-adjusted humans will put in the work whenever they’re able—those who don’t recognize that are telling on themselves.
We don’t need to waste time worrying about the what-ifs or the philosophical realities of human nature—the results are already speaking for themselves. Time after time, people facing homelessness who receive cash donations have better outcomes than those who do not. The more we study this, the more we see it holds true.
Easily Replicable
Greater Change is a small-scale operation, especially compared to the estimated 350,000 people who are currently homeless in England alone. In the face of a number like that, the 403 people helped this year may seem like a drop in the bucket. And to a certain extent, it is, but those are still 403 people whose lives were markedly improved by the help that they received.
And the beauty of the low-barrier cash gift format is that it’s easily replicable on any scale. Greater Change itself began as the brainchild of two college students back in 2018 and has since grown into all that it is now. Community groups, church groups, or just groups of friends could easily put together a small fund to start paying for urgent needs in their local communities.
It may feel like you and your friends don’t have much to give, but a lot of people giving a little can make a big difference. And you may be surprised by just how little money it actually takes to completely change someone’s life.
For many people, the difference between staying housed and spending years homeless on the streets is just a couple of hundred dollars. If you could scrape together that much as a group, you could very well change the trajectory of someone’s entire life.
One group helping a few hundred people is a good start, but imagine how many people a few hundred groups could help!