IN A FOOTBALLING FIRST, almost 100 clubs from across the English and Welsh leagues – including Portsmouth, Salford City, Sheffield United and Cardiff – have signed up to ditch their home shirts on Boxing Day for Shelter’s #NoHomeKit campaign.
In the space of every 90-minute game, 25 households will become homeless in England. That means between the first and last whistle of any football match, 25 households will no longer have a safe or secure place to call home. These could be families with young children, a couple whose lives have been thrown upside down by a cancer diagnosis, or a young person kicked out to sleep on the freezing streets.
With so many people in need of Shelter’s frontline services, the homelessness charity is calling on as many football clubs and fans as possible to get involved and swap their home shirts for their away or third kits this Boxing Day, to show their support for everyone without a home today.
Dale Vince, Chairman of Forest Green Rovers, said: “I’ve been homeless, I know what it’s like and so when Shelter asked if we’d support this brilliant campaign – you knew that we would. Britain is one of the richest nations in the world, but tens of thousands of our people have nowhere to live – that’s wrong. Changing the shirts we play in for one game is nothing, shame on the Premier League for preventing the top clubs from joining in.”
The charity is overwhelmed by the level of support it has received from the football community. Even though the Premier League blocked its clubs from taking part on the pitch, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, Brighton and Hove Albion, Brentford and Watford have decided to throw their weight behind the campaign off the pitch. The teams, who have all been vocal supporters of Shelter’s #NoHomeKit, will be helping the charity through fundraising, matchday advertising and social media content.
Portsmouth Football Club’s Chief Commercial Officer, Anna Mitchell, said: “We are proud to partner with Shelter and Oxford United to support the #NoHomeKit campaign on Boxing Day, to raise awareness for those who without a safe place to call home. We hope by wearing our Third kit for our Boxing Day fixture we will help raise awareness of the housing emergency in Portsmouth and the rest of the UK, especially over the festive season.”
Sky Sports presenters Jeff Stelling and Chris Kamara have also lent their voices to the campaign – appearing in a new advert for #NoHomeKit which sees fans and famous faces of the game trading in their team’s home colours for away and third kits on Boxing Day.
The film will be shared by some of the biggest names in the game too, including the clubs ready to ditch their home kits. Shelter hopes this will encourage even more people to support its frontline workers who are inundated with pleas for help from people who are homeless or about to be. Now that Covid protections such as the ‘Everyone In’ scheme and the eviction ban have gone, and living costs are shooting up, Shelter’s emergency helpline has been receiving 1,000 calls a day.
Andrew Gordon, Head of Engagement, Salford City Football Club, said:”We are very aware that figures for homelessness in both Salford and the surrounding areas are far from something to be proud of. And as such, we see it as our duty to engage in activity that helps to tackle this head on, including making homelessness a priority action area for our Club’s charity, Foundation 92. With this in mind we are extremely proud to be engaging with and supporting Shelter’s #NoHomeKit campaign, a simple yet effective initiative that we believe all fans and Clubs can get fully behind.”
Osama Bhutta, Director of Campaigns at Shelter, said: “We’ve been overwhelmed by the support from across the football community for our #NoHomeKit campaign, and we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who gets stuck in to fight homelessness with us this Christmas.
“In the space of a single 90-minute football match, 25 households will become homeless – many of them will be families with children. That’s why the work of our frontline advisers is so critical. Our emergency helpline is open 365 days a year, including on Christmas Day, so that no-one has to face homelessness alone. By ditching their home colours this Boxing Day, fans and players alike will be helping us to find safe and secure homes for people whose lives are on the line.”
.* See the latest data on homelessness here.
.* Source: Shelter