Everything you need to know about Museum of Homelessness Emergency Cold Weather Shelter

Flyer for Museum activities including the shelter

Our Shelter

During the winter months, we operate an emergency cold weather shelter in the museum building. We aim to maintain a cosy, comfortable site that feels homely where people can rest and relax as much as possible.

We serve good quality food and we all eat together, community style.

We operate a trauma conscious shelter and site. The majority of our team have undergone specialist trauma training and 7 people are fully trained as certified trauma conscious coaches. We are a recovery focused site and we ask that all guests and visitors respect the sober boundary on the site.

All staff and volunteers have undergone safeguarding training.

We were pleased that in 2025 our shelter was highlighted as best practice in national guidance put together by Homeless Link and Housing Justice. You can read the guidance here

Why a shelter in the museum?

What is the problem?

There are not enough bed spaces pan-london and we have evidence that some councils in London often use ‘verification’ processes that create barriers for people accessing safe shelters. In addition, our own research analysing SWEP showed that people sleeping rough do not access SWEP because:

SWEP settings do not feel safe

People don’t want to travel far to accommodation just for a couple of nights

SWEP offers have too many people in them and feel chaotic

What is the solution?

As part of our own rapid response work MoH has long carried out activity in the cold with street work, provision of hot drinks, zero degree sleeping bags and thermals.

We provide these from site too, but we also want to use the building as much as is practical. Providing a warm safe place to sleep in a site people already have a relationship with and are located near is a good way of responding.

What is SWEP?

SWEP (Severe Weather Emergency Protocol) is a non-statutory humanitarian response to extreme cold. SWEP is called by the Mayor's office when temperatures reach 0 degrees. SWEP varies between 6 nights and 20 nights per winter.

We also investigate SWEP provision and publish findings every 2 years about how councils are performing on SWEP.

For more info about SWEP, check our our website: https://museumofhomelessness.org/swe

Museum of Homelessness shelter procedures

Activating the shelter

· The shelter will open when the Mayor’s office calls SWEP.

· The shelter will close when SWEP is de-activated. There may be exceptions to this, for example if SWEP is de-activated on a Saturday, we will keep the shelter open until Monday.

Opening and closing

· The shelter opens at 7pm with a hot meal served at 8pm

· The doors will close at 9.30pm with lights out at 10pm, We provide reading lights for people who want to stay awake a bit longer without disturbing fellow guests.

· People need to arrive by 9.30pm, if they do not arrive by then they won’t be able to access the shelter that night.

· It is not possible to go outside for any reason after 9.30pm, if a person chooses to leave after 9.30pm they won’t be able to come back in that night. This is so everyone can get some proper rest without doors banging or interrupted sleep.

· Breakfast will be served at 8am and the museum needs to be ready for it’s daytime activities by 8.45am. We ask that guests help to clear and clean the space.

What we provide

· We provide a single bed, a duvet and two pillows with bedding and a towel. If the person is staying for more than one night you will have the same bedding. Otherwise we will provide clean bedding to each person on arrival.

· We provide a reading light and earplugs.

· We can provide toiletries, warm clothes and underwear from our store too.

· MoH is not able to store belongings.

· We do not have a shower unfortunately.

· We have two toilets.

· We have space for 4 – 5 guests and one staff member and one volunteer. The guests will stay in the main museum space, one staff member/volunteer in the archive room and one staff member/volunteer in the production office. If we have a guest who would feel more comfortable in one of the quiet rooms for inclusion reasons such as gender, we can organise that.

Referrals

· It is a very small shelter so we will prioritise people who are already known to MoH through our year round daytime activities. We will also take community referrals from grassroots groups and small charities. People can also self refer. Please contact jess@museumofhomelessness.org in the first instance.

When we are full, we can refer to partners and also put people in emergency hotels if needed, with the Winter fund, subject to availability and on a case by case basis.

Why not make a shelter?

We recommend that other groups and museums set up community cold weather shelters of this size, as they are a much needed humanitarian solution. Since COVID there has been a decline in the shelter network and this is a shame. If you are interested in setting up a shelter like ours you can check out this guidance or get in touch with us jess@museumofhomelessness.org

Thank you to those who make our shelter possible….

We are grateful to our crew and to our funders including Oak Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Linbury Trust, The Sarah Jane Leigh Charitable Trust, Rede, Museums Association and those who prefer not to be named, as well as donors to our Winter Appeal. Your support allows MoH to develop independent, creative, trauma conscious, community led responses to the homelessness and housing crisis that can be scaled and replicated in other settings.

You are helping us to reimagine what a museum can be and how it can best serve it’s community. THANK YOU