Deborah Garvie, Policy Manager, Shelter
Deborah is Shelter’s lead on homelessness, including the Homelessness Reduction Act. She’s currently working on a project consulting homeless families on what they feel they need from Personal Housing Plans. Deborah also led Shelter’s work on changes to homelessness and social housing introduced by the Localism Act 2011 (e.g. offers of private tenancies). She is co-author of Desperate to Escape - the experiences of homeless families in emergency accommodation (November 2016) and Using the private rented sector to tackle homelessness in your area (March 2013). She was policy adviser on Sustain: the ground-breaking Shelter and Crisis, Big Lottery funded longitudinal study of housing outcomes and well-being in private rented accommodation (2010-2014). As editor of Shelter’s Bedsit Briefing magazine, she campaigned for improvements to private rented housing. This culminated in the Housing Act 2004, which introduced the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation and protection of tenancy deposits.
