Working together to rebuild lives
Positive Action in Housing is a Glasgow-based, Scotland-wide, independent, Black & Minority Ethnic led, antiracist homelessness and human rights charity (Scottish charity reg SCO27577) dedicated to supporting people from refugee and immigrant communities in rebuilding their lives.
Gaza ...
What’s happening
Join us in calling on the UK government to end its Biometric Blockade of Palestinian family dependents and students trying to leave Gaza
August 23rd 2025: Positive Action in Housing is supporting 75 Palestinians trapped in Gaza who are trying to reunite with family or take up student places in the UK. Instead of protection, they face a biometric blockade: visa applications refused or withdrawn because biometrics cannot be given — when no visa centre exists and the borders are sealed. Families are told to “use existing routes” that are structurally blocked. Students are left waiting in a warzone, while other European countries have evacuated theirs. This is not bureaucracy. It is bureaucratic cruelty by design. For Ukrainians, barriers were lifted. For Palestinians, every door is closed. Time is measured in lives. Every day of delay costs more lives. Write to your MP, speak out on social media, and share this with family, friends, and colleagues.
People seeking asylum are living on £1.40 a day. Will you help?
Our Refugee Appeal is raising funds to provide humanitarian assistance to refugee families, children, babies, lone women and men — including torture survivors and those fleeing wars and persecution — who are forced to live without n extreme poverty here in the UK.
Our impact
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children, women and men
from 4,038 BME, refugee, asylum seeking and immigrant households from ninety-four countries of origin to overcome crises and rebuild their lives by providing housing and social welfare advice, rights information, casework, and direct humanitarian support in the form of emergency provisions and shelter
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Families and individuals were helped to resettle
Aided by sessional workers and volunteers, the Housing & Homelessness Team received over 2,500 requests for crisis support and homelessness assistance via our Homelessness Helpline and email enquiries (a 25% increase on the previous year). It provided detailed advice, information, and casework representation to 1,082 households needing housing or homelessness assistance, representing an 11% increase compared to the previous financial year.
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children, women and men sheltered through our pioneering Room for Refugees Network
524 households from 40 countries incl. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. Providing 149,736 placement nights of shelter, saving the UK and Scottish governments £15M in housing costs.
What we do
By empowering people with information, advice and targeted practical support we enable individuals to achieve independence. Through proactive casework, we challenge unfair decisions and processes that make people’s lives harder.
Housing and homelessness
The Housing & Homelessness Team runs four distinct projects designed to assist BME communities, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers
Lifeline Destitution Service
Crisis intervention for destitute or insecurely housed people fleeing war and persecution providing beneficiaries with breathing space to overcome a crisis and rebuild their lives quickly.
Emergency Relief Fund
The Emergency Relief Fund directly helps those who are facing severe hardship due to poverty or homelessness. The Fund supports our annual Winter Appeal. Donations from people like you make this possible.
Winter Refugee Crisis Appeal
Raising vital funds to provide humanitarian aid to refugee and asylum-seeking families and individuals — including torture survivors and those fleeing wars and persecution — who are facing destitution and homelessness across Scotland this winter.
“Room for Refugees enables those moved by compassion and a sense of justice to offer shelter to someone in need.”
Positive Action in Housing pioneered refugee hosting in in 2002. We run the Room for Refugees Network — the UK's oldest established refugee hosting programme.
We have 20 years of expertise in responding in a refugee crisis. To date we have sheltered over 5,000 refugees. We have 20,000 fully registered hosts. Over 500 refugee, emergency and homelessness organisations, including the British Red Cross, all Refugee Councils, Freedom from Torture, Migrants Organise, The Passage refer their clients to us, and we process hostings on our online platform. We have hosts in every part of the U.K.
- To become a host visit www.roomforrefugees.com or complete the online host request form
- Individuals who need to be accommodated via Room for Refugees can complete this refugee request form
- Donate to our Appeal today
- See also our resources for refugees from Ukraine, and for supporters
During the time I’ve worked in Glasgow covering social issues, Positive Action in Housing has been a constant presence and an extremely useful one. I admire this charity because it is no respecter of institution or status where injustice needs to be tackled. I think it is worth thinking about how unusual that is – journalistically, I encounter people all the time who would like to speak out but don’t – due to concern over offending funders or alienating those in political power.
Stephen Naysmith, former Social Affairs Correspondent, The Herald