News

New Peer Landlord Interim Evaluation Released

By Rebecca Dillon / October 31, 2014

Commonweal releases interim findings of an independent, four year evaluation of the pilot Peer Landlord shared housing model.

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Left penniless in the asylum loophole

By Rebecca Dillon / October 8, 2014

A State system that enforces destitution; sets out to deny people the opportunity to support themselves and removes housing options; whilst at the same time preventing them from accessing even rudimentary benefits or assistance is, in our opinion, a social injustice. A major social injustice. But the asylum system does just that. That is why…

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Celebrating two years of shared living

By Rebecca Dillon / October 8, 2014

The Peer Landlord scheme has now been up and running for over two years. That’s two years of offering tenants a shared, reasonably priced and supportive home. Both Thames Reach and Catch22 continue to deliver the Peer Landlord project – from recruiting tenants, ensuring rent is paid, providing training to Peer Landlords and generally managing all…

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The next step in re-uniting families post-prison

By Rebecca Dillon / October 8, 2014

Commonweal’s principle objective is to be an incubator of new ideas and new models – finding housing solutions to a range of different social injustices.  We are an action learning charity seeking to test new models; where they are proven to work we encourage and facilitate their replication; if the models don’t we  ensure we…

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And the band played on……

By Rebecca Dillon / September 22, 2014

Hair brained schemes and crackpot ideas…..it can be said that this has been a theme of my nearly 30 years working in housing.  Alongside others, I have been involved with helping to identify new solutions to problems others may have considered unsolvable or had simply filed under too difficult.  Although starting off in mainstream housing management,…

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Keeping families together

By Rebecca Dillon / September 10, 2014

It is often said that the Englishman’s house is his castle. However not everyone is lucky enough to have a stable home. What do you do and where do you live for example if you are a young mother with a couple of children, are caught up in the wrong crowd, and have been charged…

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