A company in Bristol is profiting from housing homeless people -- by making other people homeless.

Connolly & Callaghan manages emergency accommodation across Bristol. It gets paid huge rents for every homeless person it houses. So it’s been buying up blocks of flats to convert into homeless accommodation.

The only problem is, private tenants have been living in those blocks of flats, paying affordable rents, for years. And now the corporation is evicting them -- and it’s made at least one of them homeless!

This is short-sighted profiteering at its very worst. But if we can get Bristol City Council to stop placing homeless people with Connolly & Callaghan, we’ll force the corporation to change its ways.

Bristol City Council: stop paying Connolly & Callaghan to make more people homeless!

‘Hannah’ lived in Carpenters Place, Bristol. When Connolly & Callaghan bought the block of flats in February, she was visiting family abroad. She didn’t receive the eviction notice sent by the company. She came home to find her flat was no longer hers, and many of her possessions had been lost or damaged. She now lives in temporary accommodation and is trying to get help from the council.

“They pulled the carpet from under my feet,” she says. “In one day everything was changed for me. I have nothing.”

Bristol City Council spends millions of pounds every year on emergency accommodation. That accommodation is a lifeline for hundreds of people who suddenly find themselves without anywhere to live. But the biggest cause of homelessness in Bristol is the termination of private-sector tenancies -- and now a company contracted by Bristol City Council to house homeless people is evicting private sector tenants en masse.

SumOfUs was created to fight the corporate capture of our public services. As a community, we’ve shown what we can achieve when we stand up to unethical corporate conduct that puts profit before people. Let’s stand up for people like Hannah. Let’s make sure Connolly & Callaghan delivers emergency accommodation in a way that doesn’t make more people homeless.