Lee’s Place: Belonging, Purpose and Pathways Out of Disadvantage

Lee’s Place is Community Power’s award winning homeless hub in the heart of Hereford which started in January 2024 from our work coordinating Herefordshire’s multi agency cross sector Homelessness Forum. Created in response to what people experiencing homelessness told us they needed, it is built around a simple principle: see the person, not the label or their circumstances.
 
Open every evening of the year 6pm-8pm, Lee’s Place is a volunteer run service providing a safe, welcoming and non-judgemental space for people who are homeless, living in temporary accommodation, or facing other forms of significant disadvantage.
 
But Lee’s Place is about much more than providing somewhere warm to go.

Relationships before services

At the heart of Lee’s Place is a belief that lasting change often begins with relationships.
 
People experiencing homelessness or multiple disadvantage can find themselves navigating a complicated landscape of housing, health, mental health, substance use, benefits, criminal justice and other services. Many have experienced trauma, exclusion and repeated setbacks, and some have lost trust in formal systems altogether.
 
Lee’s Place offers something deliberately different.
 
We focus first on belonging, dignity, consistency and human connection. People can come through the door without judgement, build relationships at their own pace and be recognised for who they are rather than being defined by homelessness, addiction, poor mental health or their past.
 
Our approach is trauma-informed and rooted in listening. We believe lived experience should help shape both the support people receive and the wider systems intended to help them.

More than managing homelessness

As Lee’s Place develops, our ambition is increasingly focused on what happens next.
 
Providing a safe place in the evening remains an important part of our work, but we do not want simply to make homelessness or disadvantage more bearable. We want to work alongside people and our partners to create realistic pathways towards greater stability, opportunity and independence.
 
For some people, that may begin with addressing an immediate housing, health or financial issue. For others, progress may start much earlier: rebuilding confidence, establishing a routine, developing trusted relationships, rediscovering an interest or skill, volunteering, taking part in an activity or simply beginning to believe that something different is possible.
 
Progress is rarely a straight line, and success will look different for every person.
 
Our role is to create the conditions in which that progress can happen.

Growing into the daytime

The next stage of Lee’s Place is therefore about growing beyond evening provision and developing the hub as a place of purpose during the day.
 
We want to create a varied programme of opportunities that people genuinely want to participate in. This could include creative and practical activities, health and wellbeing opportunities, peer support, volunteering, learning, skills development and routes into training or employment.
 
Purposeful activity is not an optional extra.
 
For someone who has experienced homelessness, isolation or long-term disadvantage, having somewhere to be, something meaningful to contribute to and people who expect to see you can be an important part of rebuilding a life.
 
Activities can provide routine, confidence, social connection and a sense of achievement. They can reveal strengths that have become hidden by crisis and create stepping stones towards volunteering, education, employment and greater independence.
 
We also want people with lived experience to increasingly help shape, lead and deliver activity within Lee’s Place, recognising the enormous value of their knowledge and experience.

Building pathways through partnership

Lee’s Place cannot create pathways out of disadvantage on its own, nor should it try to replicate every specialist service.
 
Our future lies in partnership.
 
We want Lee’s Place to become a place where organisations across housing, health, social care, mental health, substance use, criminal justice, employment, skills and the voluntary and community sector can work differently together around people.
 
Rather than expecting someone with a complex life to repeatedly find their way to multiple services, our ambition is to build relationships that enable opportunities and support to connect with people through a place they already know and trust.
 
That could mean partners providing outreach from Lee’s Place, developing activities with us, creating volunteering and employment opportunities, supporting particular groups of people or working collectively to overcome barriers that no single organisation can resolve.
 
It also means using what we learn from people’s experiences to identify where systems are not working and working constructively with partners to change them.

From crisis to connection, purpose and opportunity

Our long-term vision is for Lee’s Place to become much more than a homeless hub.
 
We want it to be a community where someone can initially walk through the door because they need warmth, food, company or safety — but where their journey does not have to end there.
 
    • They might return to take part in an activity.
    • They might discover something they are good at.
    • They might volunteer and support somebody else.
    • They might reconnect with healthcare, address an issue with their housing, develop new skills or begin training.
Eventually, they may no longer need Lee’s Place at all.
That is the direction in which we want to grow: from responding to crisis towards creating connection, purpose, opportunity and pathways out of disadvantage.
 
There will always be a need for kindness, somewhere safe to belong and people prepared to listen. But alongside that, we want to create something more ambitious — a community of people and partners that sees potential where others may see problems and works together to make lasting change possible.
 
Lee’s Place is not simply somewhere for people experiencing homelessness to go. It is somewhere from which people can begin to move forward.

Award Recognition

in 2026 Lee’s Place won two prestigious awards, recognising the tireless and impactful work of its volunteers.

BBC Make a Difference Award – The Community Group Award

Hereford Times Community Awards – Best Community Project or Group

How you can help

There are various ways that you can help support the work of Lee’s Place.

Donate To Us
View our Amazon WishList
Volunteer With Us
For day to day news and updates for Lee’s PLace please visit our Facebook or Instagram pages

Latest News

A Huge Thank You, Hereford!

A Huge Thank You, Hereford!

by | Jun 27, 2026 | ,

Community Spirit at it’s best The other week the Lee’s Place volunteer team spent the day at Sainsbury’s in Hereford raising awareness of our work and collecting food donations for our homeless guests. We were absolutely overwhelmed by the kindness, generosity, and…