Executive Summary
Homelessness, in Exeter alone, the number of rough sleepers has increased 66% (UK Government. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 2018b; Exeter sees steep rise in number of people sleeping rough, 2017). One of the issues homeless people face is the inability to get a job. The Feed the Dawgs Project, a social enterprise , provides a solution to this problem by creating jobs for homeless people. It allows aids community cohesion and the breaking down of the negative stigma around homelessness.
By selling goods and services in the open market, social enterprises create employment and reinvest back into their business or the local community. This allows them to tackle social problems, improve people’s life chances, provide training and employment opportunities for those furthest from the market, support communities and help the environment. ((https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/What-is-it-all-about)
Introduction
The right to adequate housing is a basic human right yet homelessness has increased 169% since 2010 (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d.; Butler, 2018, para. 6). The cost of rough sleeping for a single person for 12 months is £20,128, which is over 14 times the cost of successful homelessness preven¬tion¬ at £1,426 (Crisis, 2015). As of November 2017, there were 4,751 rough sleepers in the UK (UK Government. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 2018a).
The work of the Feed the Dawgs project began in April after an unforgettable moment for our founder, Bukky Oluseye. She was approached one night by a homeless man with a dog in Exeter High Street, who asked for money to feed his dog. She donated but the experience never left her. The man wasn’t looking to feed himself but was looking to feed his dog – his companion in the world of homelessness (Taylor, 2012). From that moment, she realised that we need to do more to help homeless people who own dogs.
What started simply as a project to help homeless people and their dogs is now a bigger project looking at job opportunities for homeless people. This project is called the Feed the Dawgs Project
Please note: Although homelessness is a broad term in this report, homelessness is used only in reference to rough sleeping, the “most dangerous form of homelessness” (Crisis, 2018)
BEM2032: Startup Entrepreneurship – Individual Business Report
The Feed the Dawgs Project
The Problem
Homelessness is a multi-faceted issue so social enterprises in this area often focus on one issue (An SOS from homeless people, 2005; Helping Bristol’s Homeless, 2017). Initially, the Feed the Dawgs project singled out the issue there are not enough food banks that cater to both homeless people and their dogs. Whilst trying to validate this hypothesis, we found that homeless people faced a bigger issue: the inability to get a stable job that catered to their needs as they had no fixed abode (Interviewee 1, 2018; Interviewee 2, 2018; YMCA Exeter, 2018). As a result, they found it hard to get out of homelessness because they couldn’t afford to the costs associated with housing due to having no steady income from a job. This creates a vicious cycle that many have struggled to get out from. According to Homeless Link (2018), 94% of homeless people are unemployed in comparison to the unemployment rate of 30% for the general population, further highlighting this problem.
Another issue faced is the negative stigma and misconceptions surrounding homelessness (Phelan, Link, Moore & Stueve, 1997). Some see homelessness as a result of a singular issue such as an addiction, however homelessness has many layers to it. Due to this, some have understood homelessness to be a “choice” (Crisis, 2018).
The Solution
Understanding that homelessness does not have just one cause, the Feed the Dawgs Project sought to find one of the main issues affecting homeless people through market validation.
From the market validation stage, our original idea has evolved from a social enterprise with the main focus of feeding homeless people and their dogs to one with the main focus of offering homeless people a flexible and stable job.
The solution we present to the aforementioned problems is the Feed the Dawgs bus; a place for all the community to help others get back on their feet. The bus would cater towards homeless people by providing homeless people with jobs now and the skills they need for the future. In addition to this, the bus would offer temporary accommodation, food, and services allowing homeless to break their cycle of homelessness. The bus would also allow the general public to see the impact their donation is making, therefore helping to break the negative stigma around homelessness as they are personally invested in their lives (see Appendix A; Crisis, 2015).
How does it work?
The bus would be multi-functional. The upper deck would offer shower facilities & beds for the homeless and their dogs. Whilst the lower deck would feature a food window allowing the bus to operate as a mobile café or restaurant. The lower deck would also provide tables and a seating area to be used for the café as well as for weekly recruitment and wellbeing sessions that allow the homeless to gain the skills necessary for the workplace and to prepare them to re-integrate back in working life and social life (YMCA Exeter, 2018, St. Petrocks, 2018). The lower deck would also host vet sessions for those with dogs.
This social enterprise relies on the following key partners: counsellors for wellbeing sessions; veterinarians for check-ups for any pets the homeless people have, recruitment consultants, chefs who would work and help train the employees if fresh hot food is sold (see Appendix A).
One of the challenges faced is that the bus would only offer temporary employment. To combat this, we would collaborate with recruitment consultants and other companies to ensure that the homeless people helped through the Feed the Dawgs project have a guaranteed permanent job that caters to them once their employment on the bus ends.
Growth Strategy
The Feed the Dawgs project begins with its minimum viable product (MVP); a food stand in Exeter High Street consisting of a gazebo, tables and chairs (Figure 2, 1). This allows us to solve the core problem of homeless people not being able to get a job. The potential challenges we face are that this MVP is not suitable for colder weather. This can be combatted by beginning sales from early spring and ending in mid-October allowing for 7+ months of operation as an MVP.
The next stage is to take the donations made and profits from the MVP and donations after paying wages to invest in a food van (Figure 2, 2). The food van allows us to work all year round and allows us to move easily to areas which are more frequented. Its mobility also means that the food van can be hired out for events.
To follow, the next stage is to invest in a bus that will be converted to have the features needed for the Feed the Dawgs bus (Figure 2, 3). The bus allows us to provide temporary accommodation and to continue fighting the negative stigma and misconceptions around homelessness by being a hub for the community. The goal is to have multiple buses operating around the UK, and then expanding to other places such as Europe (Foster, 2017).
The final stage looks to combat another aspect of homelessness: the difficulty getting housing by investing in permanent affordable housing (Figure 2, 4). We would purchase cargo containers which would be converted in to self-contained housing. The benefits of using containers is they are space efficient, quick to construct and environmentally friendly as old containers are recycled to create them, with each costing approximately £22,000 to construct (Container Housing, n.d.; Interviewee experiencing homelessness 1, 2018; Marine Insight, 2018). This solution provides homeless people with a fixed abode allowing them to take on a more permanent job. It is also a solution that would work well in areas, like London where housing is very expensive (Chu, 2018).
Cost Structure and Revenue Stream
For each van, we estimate costs of £45,000, which includes purchasing the food van, £1880.00 for a year’s street trading license and equipment needed in the van (Terenzio, 2015; NCASS Equipment, 2018; NCASS, 2018; Exeter City Council, 2016)
For each bus, we estimate costs of £60,000, which includes purchasing the bus and converting it so its fit for purpose.
To cover these costs, we will be relying on donations mainly via street collections and also on profits made selling food and drink products (May, 2017). The goal is for each stage in the growth strategy to be self-sustaining and produce enough for the following stage (see Appendix A)
Competitive Analysis
A few of the current social enterprises with an approach to homelessness are: YMCA, Change Please and the Big Issue.
YMCA currently caters to homeless people between the ages of 16-29. (YMCA Exeter, 2018). Focussing on Exeter alone, there are 33 rough sleepers over the age of 25, meaning that many will not have access to YMCA (UK Government. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, 2018b; Interviewee experiencing homeless 1, 2018).
Change Please is charity that provides jobs for homeless people only in London and so it’s not an option for all homeless people (Change Please, n.d.).
The Big Issue allows homeless people to work independently as micro-entrepreneurs who are “working, not begging” by buying the Big Issue magazines from the company at £1.25 each and selling them on for £2.50, making a profit of £1.25 per sale (The Big Issue, 2018).
Based on this, it is clear that there is a gap in the market for a social enterprise such as Feed the Dawgs project that will offer wages £8.75 per hour. There are currently other mobile bus shelters such as Help Bristol’s Homeless and The Bus Shelter IOW, however these are both ideas that are aimed at specific locations (Bristol and the Isle of Wight, respectively) and are both ideas which take on a housing-first approach (Help Bristol’s Homeless, 2017; Isle of Wight double decker bus to serve the homeless, 2016)
Impact
Using the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (2018) impact measurement framework, we can value the impact that Feed the Dawgs will create. PwC’s Total Impact Measurement and Management (TIMM) framework works “by valuing social, environmental, and economic impacts”
Social impact is “the effect of an activity in the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families” (Social impact, 2018).
For Feed the Dawgs, helping to strengthen a community is making social impact. According to Holt-Lunstad, Smith & Layton (2010), communities with “with strong social relationships are likely to remain alive longer than similar individuals with poor social relations”. Feed the Dawgs encourages community cohesion through customer-employee interaction as the general public can see directly who their purchase is helping and helping to debunk misconceptions surrounding homelessness.
In addition to this, social and economic impact can be measured by the number of jobs we create. Assuming for each van, we hired 8 homeless people doing 16 hours a week each at £8.75 per hour, each person would earn £140 per week to invest in themselves. This allows the unemployment rates for homeless people to decrease as more jobs are created to cater to them.
By hiring homeless people, the project supports independency as the services offered do not give but allow homeless people to have a living so they can support themselves. By teaching homeless people skill, we can ensure that they can take those skills with them to future jobs (YMCA Exeter, 2018).
By creating jobs for homeless people, we can help decrease “the estimated annual cost of homelessness is £1billion”, most of which is covered by the UK government (Homeless Link, 2018). This is because This allows money can be redirected to other areas such as education and police services.
What does success look like?
Using the definition of what homelessness provided by Crisis (2018, p.45 – figure 3), success for the Feed the Dawgs project is aiding in the elimination of homelessness altogether in the UK ahead of the government goal of 2027 (UK Government. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government) and ensuring no one is at risk of homelessness.
Figure 3: The definition of homelessness ended. Adapted from Everybody In (p. 45) by Crisis. Copyright Crisis 2018
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