“I know people that have been sleeping in phone boxes because they’ve just not had anywhere to go. Knowing there’s a service that tries to look out for you… it’s something optimistic to hold on to.” 

Twenty-one-year-old Kassi is shy and quick to smile, but her warmth hides a difficult past. Struggling with a complicated family life, her parents’ traditional values increasingly clashed with her need for independence and Kassi left home as soon as she could with little hope of return: “We clashed heads growing up quite a lot and there was a bit of abuse going on, like physical and emotional abuse,” she explains. 

Moving away for university, she hoped to support herself, but with no parental income to guarantee her student loan, her application was refused and it wasn’t long before she was forced to drop out. After that she sofa-surfed “bouncing back and forth between friends” for around four months, this meant uncertainty and worry including encountering racism, also being dismissed in a way that she had not experienced before, but she could not go home. Then one day even these options finally ran out. “I didn’t know where I was going… it was really stressful,” she recalls. 

Through an online search Kassi discovered Nightstop, an emergency accommodation service for young people in crisis, and within days was placed in the homes of trained and vetted volunteers in London who would give her a safe place to stay and a meal for the night. “They didn’t poke or prod too much… the way they treated me felt a lot more human,” says Kassi.  

“Knowing I had a place to shower and sleep instead of having to sleep rough, it was incredibly reassuring and comforting”. 

She stayed for almost a month with Nightstop, moving every few days between hosts. “It’s the kindness you remember” she recalls. “Like the elderly host who made me a dessert and the young couple in Wimbledon who cooked me a vegetarian dinner.”  

While staying with Nightstop, Kassi began attending church again, “it’s funny” she says “I grew up going to a Catholic primary school, but I turned away from religion in my teenage years. Yet when I was homeless, I started going to church again on Sundays. Just having somewhere to pray and be for the day is a really nice feeling; it offers a bit of solace.” This spiritual nurturing was mirrored by the care she received from Nightstop coordinator Charlie.

“Honestly he was so lovely, really supportive. I remember one time I fell asleep on the couch there. I woke up and there was a little plate of food he had left for me. I really don’t know what would have happened if Nightstop had not called me back.”  

The London Nightstop team worked hard to make sure Kassi would not face another night on the streets – managing to secure her a place in our Youth Hub, a one-of-its-kind supported accommodation in the capital that gives young people in crisis short-term safe housing and support to secure a more permanent route out of homelessness. “I remember thinking, at least it’s a lot more stable. Every night I’ve got a roof over my head and they have a pantry, so food is available.”  

But Kassi ended up staying at the Hub over the Christmas period too, when many of the residents, just like her, didn’t feel safe to go back to their families: “I ended up watching movies with a couple of people here. To know that support is there…and people were working at this time to make a Christmas for us, it was really sweet.”  

Kassi is now looking forward to the year with genuine hope – she is returning to university and was working with Luton, the manager at the Hub, to achieve this. But her big dream is to get into youth work herself. Meanwhile she got herself a job working in a restaurant chain “Going through something like this, I know I can give support and let someone know they’re not alone.” She continues: “You never know, one day you might be thinking, ‘this is it, there’s no up from here’, but if you just reach out and get some support everything can change for the better.“