How does homelessness happen? For 21-year-old Jason Humphreys, it was when his dad’s house was repossessed. At 16 Jason found himself sofa surfing, desperately trying to save and get a steady job. The stress of the situation caused the relationship at home to breakdown and Jason couldn’t see a way out.

After four years of homelessness, Jason discovered Brighton Housing Trust’s Accommodation for Work project. A one-stop-shop for getting people back on their feet, the project offers 12 months accommodation plus one-to-one guidance on everything from job applications to managing a weekly budget.

“I was struggling to save for a deposit, but I couldn’t get enough work to live on,” Jason remembers. “My DIY store job was a zero hour’s contract and I could go for up to a month without working, until I was eventually laid off. I felt horrible, looking so hard but not finding work was very depressing”.

The day Jason came to Accommodation for Work was the moment things finally started to turn around. Jason was placed in temporary shared accommodation and, using the house’s computer, managed to track down free security training. Within a month, he had a security guard’s job.

Having just left his Accommodation for Work house, Jason has saved up money and is preparing to move into a rental flat with his girlfriend. “Just knowing I had a roof over my head made a difference,” he says. “What really changed things was getting help managing my finances. I learned how to live on a budget and I’m still living on it now. If I ever had a hard day, I could come home and talk about it”.

Thanks to £439,000 of National Lottery funding over five years, Jason is just one of the many people Accommodation for Work has helped get back on the path to independence and security.