So, we come to the end of another year.
 
A year where we began with

• 64 homes and ended with 76.
• 58 church partners and ended with 67.
• 164 tenants sleeping in our homes every night and ended with us and our church partners supporting 207 every single night.
• Hope into Action homes being in 19 towns and ending in 23

And every year we run our outcomes and find that

• More than 88% maintain their tenancy,
• over 86% of those who have been in jail remain out,
• 84% are improving their drug misuse, and
• 37% gained employment of some form.

This all comes with a lot of work, constantly trying to improve things, while dealing with a relentless stream of issues- many of them challenging or painful to deal with.
In recent weeks I have been struck by the range of areas we celebrate.

• Moving people off the streets.
• Moving a mum and baby into a house.
• A tenant turning up to an appointment after weeks of non-engagement.
• A tenant coming off heroin
• A tenant moving on from us into independent accommodation.
• A tenant being baptised.
• Standing with a tenant in court.
• A tenant addressing historical debts and becoming debt free
• Helping someone learn to read.
• Being a birthing partner to one of our tenants.
• Church volunteers, lovingly, cleaning a house after a tenancy has ended.
• Praying with a tenant diagnosed with cancer.

  
And so these are the range of issues which overlap with ‘homelessness’. When we hear of the church engaging in this homeless space in an effective, relational, empowering way – we feel we have achieved our mission and, as our outcomes suggest, we are able to have a sense of achieving the call of Isaiah to ‘break every yoke’. A verse I recently found well expressed by Leslie Newbigin:
‘All the benefits which Christ was sent to bring was to enable people to be restored to their true humanity.’  
 
Thanks for supporting us on our journey. We wish everyone reading this a great Christmas and even better 2020.
 
Ed and everyone at Hope into Action