Meet the woman furnishing homes for domestic abuse survivors given empty flats with no beds
Domestic abuse survivors are being driven back to their perpetrators after being given empty social housing with no beds for their children, a social worker-turned-interior-designer has warned.
When families escaping domestic violence are rehoused by their local council, properties are often stripped of all white goods, furniture, and flooring for health and safety reasons.
Having left their old homes suddenly without any of their belongings, families often end up in a flat or house with nowhere to cook or store food and no beds to sleep in, Emily Wheeler, founder of the charity Furnishing Futures, tells Sky News.
“There are no curtains at the windows, there’s no oven, no fridge, no washing machine,” she says. “Children are expected to sleep on concrete floors with no beds or bedding.
“Mothers may have experienced economic abuse or coercion and might not have access to their money and find themselves having to start again.
“So you can understand why some women think ‘this is actually no better for my children than going back to my previous situation’.”
Pic: Penny Wincer
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Emily has been a frontline social worker in east London for more than 20 years. During a career break, during which she had her two children, she retrained as an interior designer.
When she returned to social work in 2014, she says austerity meant council budgets were being cut and previously available grants for social housing tenants were no longer funded.
“I’ve always seen furniture poverty throughout my career, but it had got worse,” she says.
“I was meeting families living in these conditions without furniture and without access to support.
“When you look at the amount of stuff councils have to spend money on just to keep people safe, furniture isn’t the priority.”
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Moved into empty flat two days after giving birth
Laura, not her real name, moved between different emergency accommodations while she was pregnant with her first child after being abused by her ex-partner.
She says she was offered a council flat two days after giving birth.
“When I first moved in it was all dirty, there was no furniture, no carpet, no cooker, fridge, or washing machine.
“I had to take out an emergency loan from Universal Credit to get away from my partner, so I didn’t have any money left when my baby was born. The first couple of nights I could only eat takeaway food because there was nothing to cook with.
“It had concrete floors. I’d get up in the middle of the night to make my baby a bottle and it would be freezing, so I had to put blankets all over the floor.”
Chief executive of the National Housing Federation Kate Henderson says: “In social housing, carpets have historically been removed as standard practice for practical reasons, to ensure hygiene between lets and to prevent any possible contamination.
“In some cases, housing associations provide new flooring as standard when a home is re-let, or in other cases they may provide decorating vouchers to new tenants, which can be used for flooring of their choice.”
According to a 2021 study by the campaign group End Furniture Poverty, only 1% of social housing properties are furnished.
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Councils under ‘no legal obligation’
The Housing Act 1985 states that a local authority “may fit out, furnish and supply a house provided by them with all requisite furniture, fittings and conveniences”.
But Emily says this means there is no legal obligation to do so.
“Councils are fulfilling their duty by providing housing, so in the eyes of the law they’re not doing anything wrong.
“But having an empty shell of concrete is not a home – just because you’re not on the streets.”
Having seen the problem on a wider scale when she began chairing multi-agency child protection conferences, she decided to combine her skills as a designer and social worker – and create a charity to help bridge the gap.
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Furnishing Futures was set up in 2019. Emily and her team refloor, paint, and furnish empty properties given to trauma and domestic abuse survivors by councils.
She uses her industry connections, which include Soho House, DFS, Dunelm, and others, to source donated furniture, and fundraises for the rest.
She believes it is the only charity of its kind in the UK.
So far they have furnished more than 80 homes across east London, and a pilot scheme with Waltham Forest council and housing association Peabody will see another three completed there.
But with thousands of families on social housing waiting lists in each of the capital’s 32 boroughs alone, she wants to expand nationally.
“The hardest thing about my job is having to say no to people because we don’t have the capacity,” she says.
“Every day we get inquiries from women, midwives, health visitors, other local authorities, domestic abuse agencies – but we’re just a small team and the demand is huge.”
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The charity has a 4,000-square-foot warehouse, a team of five full-time staff, and a group of regular volunteers who help with flooring, painting, and assembling furniture.
As situations are often urgent, work is usually done in just one day.
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Empty homes are form of ‘revictimisation’
Jen Cirone, director of services at Solace Women’s Aid, one of the charity’s partners, says being housed in an empty home and having to start again is a form of “revictimisation”.
But she says of the charity: “It’s not only the practicalities of having a beautiful space to live in but also demonstrates that others care and that invested in that family as too often self-esteem and confidence is shattered as a result of experiencing abuse.
“Together, Furnishing Futures is able to complete the road to recovery that work with Solace has put them on.”
Hannah, not her real name, is another of Emily’s clients.
She was homeless after leaving her ex-partner and given emergency accommodation a day before she was due to give birth to her first child.
“I felt extremely stressed and vulnerable,” she says. “As a victim of domestic violence and heavily pregnant, I already felt alone and unsupported.
“This empty space didn’t feel like ‘home’ and it certainly wasn’t suitable for baby.”
As a type one diabetic she also had nowhere to store her insulin injections, she adds.
“I ended up staying in hospital for some time due to an emergency C-section and during that time Emily turned my empty, scary space into a home for me and my child.”
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Pic: Furnishing Futures
Emily says that although COVID and the cost-of-living crisis have opened the conversation about poverty and how it affects domestic abuse survivors, the situation is “worse than ever”.
“We’re not just talking about poverty now, we’re talking about destitution,” she says.
“People need safe and comfortable homes. You won’t be able to recover from trauma, rebuild your life, and be a productive part of society if you don’t have your basic needs met.”
A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “Domestic abuse survivors deserve a safe home and we are grateful to Furnishing Futures for the work they do to help these families rebuild their lives.
“We expect social housing providers to play their part and provide homes that are of a decent quality, if tenants are unhappy, we encourage them to speak to their landlords. Our Social Housing Regulation Act is also driving up standards and strengthened the role of the Ombudsman so that it is easier for tenants to raise complaints.”
At a community food table in Staffordshire, produce is being handed out for free.
“I need to come here otherwise we’d be living on bread,” Rebecca Flynn told Sky News.
The 51-year-old said: “I’m earning pretty decent money, but it’s not enough.”
Rebecca Flynn
It gives you an insight into just how deeply the cost of living crisis is biting – because Rebecca is working full-time as an office manager for a day service for people with learning difficulties.
On top of that, she has a second job going door-to-door on evenings and weekends, selling cosmetics and homeware.
“There’s nothing more I can do. Unless I win the lottery or get another job. It should be noticed that people are in this state,” she says.
“Local councils, local governments, they need to see what’s going on, come to ground level. It’s 2025. It shouldn’t be like this.”
But it’s not just Rebecca working all hours and needing food handouts to survive.
Alex Chapman is the co-founder of the Norton Canes Community Food Table, and says a third of the people who use it are working full-time.
“It’s mad that you’re working a good job and you think you’d be able to afford everything and go on holiday and everything like that, but in reality they’re struggling to put food on the table,” he says.
“We’re seeing a massive increase in the people that are using the food table. We see them in their work outfits. Professionals, nurses – you don’t expect them to be struggling because they’re working full-time. People who aren’t working – you expect them to be struggling. But it’s across the board.”
Cannock Chase
The food table is in Cannock Chase.
Sky News analysis of local authorities gives an insight into why people are feeling dissatisfied their salaries are no longer delivering the comfortable lifestyles they thought hard work and a good job would deliver.
Over the past few years, Cannock Chase has gone from being a middle-class part of Britain to one of the lowest-earning areas in the UK.
In 2021, UK average annual salaries were just short of £26,000 – Cannock Chase was almost identical, according to Sky News analysis of Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Since then, the UK average wage has increased by 21.6% – or more than £5,000 a year – keeping pace with high inflation.
But in Cannock Chase, salaries have only risen by 8.4% – meaning on average people are now £300 worse off per month than the average worker across the UK.
SEE HOW YOUR AREA HAS COPED WITH THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS
It won’t have escaped your attention that prices have gone up, by a lot – by a fifth since 2021, the highest sustained rate since the 1990s – with some of the biggest rises among essentials like energy and food.
But, across the whole country, wages have actually done a pretty good job at keeping up with inflation. The problem is that the wage increase is an average, made up of highs and lows, while the price rises affect us more uniformly.
That means if you haven’t had a pay-rise, you will quite quickly find that you can’t afford as many of the things you used to.
People in places like Brentwood in Essex, the Cotswolds in rural Gloucestershire, and Melton in Leicestershire, have seen their wages increase at twice the rate of prices in the last few years, on average.
But on the other end of the scale are places like Cannock Chase, where inflation has been more than double the rate of wage increases.
It used to be a place where average earnings pretty much exactly reflected the UK midpoint. Now, people in Cannock are about £300 worse-off every month than the average person.
See how your area compares with our look-up.
Louise Schwartz, who has two children, describes herself as middle-class. After 20 years in the classroom she now has three jobs, working 50 hours a week as a teaching coach, at a software firm and giving private music lessons.
Her husband is an estate agent. They have a mortgage and three cars and together earn around £80,000 a year.
She says the family loves travelling together but can’t afford to go on holiday this year: “It makes me feel sad for my kids, more than anything, that we can’t give them a week away.
“We have food on the table, we’ve got heating, we’ve got cars to drive. But there are definitely some luxuries that we’ve cut back on recently.
“We don’t do expensive supermarkets. We don’t do expensive brands. We do whatever’s on offer for that particular week. My eldest son has started driving, which has then had an impact on my daughter’s horse-riding lessons.”
Louise Schwartz
Louise adds that the family have a hot tub in the garden that they bought years ago, but because of the cost of electricity, they don’t use it.
I ask her: “What does it say that a teacher and an estate agent both working full time can’t afford to go on holiday this year?”
She replies: “I think a lot of people might not be surprised by that because I think people are probably in a similar position but maybe we just don’t talk about it.”
Full-time workers tell us again and again they thought their lifestyles would be more comfortable – that the work ethic would be delivering more than it is.
Heidi Boot
It seems the dissatisfaction is not only what one person described as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, but also the lack of what people refer to as “pleasure money”.
Heidi Boot is what you might call the backbone of the middle classes – running a small business full-time called HB Aesthetics, a salon that does eyebrows, eyelashes and nails.
“I feel like everybody is stretching their appointments. People are working so hard for their money and they’ve got nothing to show for it. They’ve paid all their bills and now they’ve got nothing left to spend on themselves,” she says.
“It shouldn’t be that way. But because I see it all the time I feel like it’s just the normal now.”
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The constituency of Cannock Chase has always voted the way of the country – and at the last election showed significant support for Reform.
The financial woes will worry the government, which insists it’s taking action to give workers more money in their pockets.
But there’s no denying the despairing mood of middle England in the political battlegrounds that brought Labour to power.
A yellow heat health alert is in place from midday for most of England, with temperatures expected to peak in the mid-30s tomorrow.
Parts of the country are facing a fourth heatwave of the summer, where highs pass a threshold on three consecutive days.
Check the weather forecast where you are
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July: Why does it feel hotter in the UK?
Sky News meteorologist Christopher England said the high pressure that brought the warmth of the last few days via the “heat dome” effect is moving east, as low pressure moves in towards the west.
This will bring even warmer air up from the near continent, making it hotter for most over the next few days.
“Southern Britain can expect temperatures widely into the low 30s then, perhaps exceeding 35C (95F) in places,” Mr England said.
“There’s around a 10% chance Wales may exceed its august peak temperature of 35.2C recorded at Hawarden on 2 August 1990.”
He also predicts “some very muggy nights” in the South, with temperatures quite widely holding above 20C (68F) in towns and cities, known as “tropical nights”.
A yellow health alert is in place from 12pm on Monday through to Wednesday evening for most of England – covering all regions except for the North West and North East.
The warning issued by the UK Health Security Agency means it expects heat-related issues such as an increase in deaths of over-65s, a higher demand on health services and an increased risk of overheating for vulnerable people.
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Drought in England explained
The Met Office’s criteria for a heatwave are met when temperatures are above a certain level for three consecutive days. This threshold varies from 25C to 28C (77F to 82F) depending on location.
Meteorologist Tom Morgan said there would be a “North-South split in the weather” today.
He said it would be “quite cloudy across Scotland, Northern Ireland and parts of northern England, the rain tending to come and go, but most persistent in western Scotland”.
The remnants of ex-tropical storm Dexter has headed towards the UK from the Atlantic.
This could bring the potential of rain and thunderstorms tonight and into tomorrow.
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