Shales Road opening
In 2025 SSJ purchased Shales Road. Shales Road is a 6-bed shared house and yet another big move for SSJ towards ending homelessness across Southampton.
Shales Road is now part of the SSJ Supported Lettings Pathway, a pathway for service users who require intensive support and have experienced long periods of homelessness. They may also have a multitude of complex needs such as addiction, mental ill health, trauma, neurodiversity and adverse childhood experiences. The pathway aims to address the immediate and pressing needs of the service user such as access to healthcare, maximising income, managing a license and sharing a house with others.
Finding the right longer-term tenancy for this client group can be particularly challenging. They start in large shared houses and we support them, often over a long period of time, to progress towards independence. Moving straight from this pathway into independent living is unlikely and the pathway to more long-term accommodation is often cyclical and protracted.
This is where Shales Road comes in, it is a positive move towards independence, but still with intensive support. Shales Road is a beautiful house, renovated and finished to a high standard, and is now part of the internal pathway for supported lettings. The 6 service users living there have all progressed well, and have demonstrated that they can manage their license agreements with support by ensuring their service charge is paid and on time, that they can be a good neighbour and housemate, manage their visitors, and work together to keep the house a nice clean, safe space.
Our Supported Lettings Manager, Sarah, says “the residents are managing the house really well and are showing huge respect for their new luxurious environment. The kitchen is kept clean every day, bins are taken out and they cook for each other”. It is from Shales Road we can start to explore the possibility of advocating for service users to move to a service with less support or to move towards having a place of their own.
On the day that Shales Road opened – the 5th February 2025 the first resident to move in, knelt down on the floor after seeing his room and said “thank you so much”. Overcome with joy and happiness, he then burst into tears. He was soon joined by the next person to move in, and they jumped around the kitchen hugging each other and laughing. A genuinely heart-warming moment.
Shales Road is a real treasure and an amazing addition to the supported lettings pathway ensuring we continue to provide bespoke support to people accessing our services. Moving people closer to independence and their own home.
All rooms have their own bathrooms, there is a large kitchen, small and comfortable meeting room, dining room, utility room, office space and a fantastic ‘activity room’ with individual tables and chairs used for meetings and future SSJ Academy sessions.