Shelter Reviews 

Terrible people.

awful service.

these people cannot be trusted.
they are liars and put themselves well before any clients.
nasty company

they have caused me so many problems with my landlord, which directly due to my eviction. I was not getting evicted for any other reason apart from Shelter.
I am taking Shelter to court because they deliberately caused a bad situation into a much worse situation.

DO NOT TRUST THESE PEOPLE AT ALL.

you can see that they only have 1 star reviews. They are a business that takes money from the public (including myself) and only pay themselves with this money. They outsource legal work to useless solicitors that are of no benefit to anyone apart from Shelter who get financial benefits for their crappy referrals

This is my experience of the Shelter Charity, I have given it weeks to allow for peak demand but I am convinced that the issue is permanent and deliberate.

Shelter is supposed to help the homeless but it puts up an impossible barrier to getting help.

I have spend weeks trying to help someone with priority need who has a condition that makes it impossible for them to call themselves.

The Shelter website is very confusing and does not help, for example the first question does not ask you if you are actually homeless only if you have been served with an eviction notice. So it excluded those already homeless.

Of course you have to call them and this is where there seems to be a deliberate barrier, I am guessing that it is to fool the stats otherwise why would they do this.

Most organisations have a machine that answers your call, you then choose the situation you are in to get through to the right department. Some might have a DDI number so you can jump straight into a queue. All fair enough, but NOT Shelter.

What Shelter does is force you to listen to one and half minutes of out going diatribe message and then says "all of our operators are busy" and then they TERMINATE THE CALL !!!!

You can't hold, you have to redial and listen to the droning on message over and over and over and
over and over and over and over and over again.

This is simply unfair and I have tried all day every day for 7 weeks, I have tried early in the morning, through the day, at lunch times, in the afternoon and later in the day. The only time I got through to anyone was when a lady said she was clearing down the queue because it was withing 30 minutes of the time that their operators go home. That was the ONLY time I actually got onto the queue.

I really do not know if anyone ever gets through.

What Shelter need to do is have the same outgoing message and then say at the end "press 1 if you are street homeless or press 2 to hear other options" so NOT terminate the call, they then need to have the machine tell the caller what position they are in the queue.

We are all used to this, my GP has me at 36th in the queue and once I called a big Gas Repair company and was in position 426 in the queue, but the queue reduced quickly.

Certainly Shelter can use the call answering machine to ask the caller some questions like

Press 1 if you are currently street homeless
Press 2 Is a Council evicting you from Temporary Accommodation
Press 3 If your Landord is trying to evict you without a statutory Section 21 or Section 8 notice.
Press 4 If you have received an eviction notice
Press 5 for anything else.

each of these options can drill down further if necessary but a caller should be able to rapidly join a queue by typing in the appropriate shortcuts, e.g. 147 and then hold for as long as it takes.

It seems that Shelter have deliberately designed the current system to prevent people from accessing their service. I know that things are bad but they are depriving the most needy and isn't aren't they the people they are supposed to be helping.

My experience date is today and has been the same for 7 weeks of trying to get through every day.

Utterly useless and biased organisation that are financed from mostly public funding as well as other dubious sources that hold the assumption all landlords are evil and that they hold the moral high ground and act in the tenants interests in whatever the manner the tenant behaves .
An utterly disgraceful organisation that needs bringing to account , I see that they are now the subject of various litigation as I speak .
Do not give them a penny !

Waste of Time They don't stay in contact with you then they lose your paper work when they should return it
they just a charity scam

They say their number is for homeless and for ppl in an emergency but I have been ringing them for 15 days now up to 10 times a day and no one answers.

Not right to have homeless ppl ringing for days. They have no home and alot of times, no access to computer.

It's cold and wet and I need their help. God help me🙏.

Worse than useless. They are supposed to help people having issues with their landlords. I've been getting abused by my landlords Manor Estates Housing Association in Edinburgh, they are using coercive behaviour towards me and emotional and targeted abuse. I've contacted Citizens Advice, Granton Information Centre, every lawyer in Edinburgh, my MSP, no one was interested and kept either telling me to work with the Housing Association to resolve the issues or contact Shelter Scotland. I've contacted Shelter Scotland twice and been told we can't help you and pass the buck to other organisations that I've already contacted previously. They are no help whatsoever!!

Impossible to contact this charity's emergency helpline, no matter what day or time I try to call. This is despite calling because I am at potentially at risk of loosing my home and need urgent advice. This charity is not fit for purpose anymore.