Shelter has apologised after being accused of asking a homeless military veteran to add a defence of migrants receiving accommodation to his personal account of homelessness.
The former soldier had responded to a request from the charity last December for people to share their experiences. His testimony described serving in Eastern Europe, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, losing his home, living in emergency accommodation and pursuing a legal dispute with Chesterfield Borough Council.
Shelter initially told him his account was “exactly the sort of story they were looking for”. But weeks later, the veteran said he was surprised to receive a further message suggesting that his testimony address the issue of migrants “getting homes”.
The message said: “One thing we need to be mindful of is that (for some reason) people conflate veterans being homeless with migrants ‘getting homes’, so we’d need to address this in the post.”
It suggested that he could write suitable wording himself, or that Shelter could add a statement saying: “We need social homes. Everything else, putting the blame on migrants, so-called ‘affordable’ homes that are not actually affordable, telling people to ‘save up and buy’ is unacceptable. Only social home building will end homelessness.”
The veteran, who has asked not to be identified, said he had shared a deeply personal account after being encouraged by Shelter to do so and had expected to tell his own story.
“Yet a political issue concerning migrants was subsequently introduced, and I was forced to promote a particular message within the story,” he said. “I regard that as an attempt to turn my personal experience into political propaganda that I had never consented to.”
He said the episode raised questions about how charities obtained and used the stories of vulnerable people, and whether those people were being given a genuine voice or being used to support an organisation’s “open borders and pro-migration messaging”.
Conservative MP Katie Lam, the party’s local government and housing spokesman, accused Shelter of treating the veteran as a “political pawn” in what she called “an ideological Left-wing campaign”.
“If Shelter are taking donations on the basis that they’re helping to get homeless people off the streets, that should be their only focus,” she said. “Putting pro-migrant propaganda in the mouth of a veteran is not only appalling on an individual basis, it’s a total betrayal of people who’ve given them money in good faith.”
Shelter said it valued people sharing their “lived experience of the housing emergency” and accepted that its approach in this case was not right.
“We are sorry for that,” a spokesman said. “Our commitment to telling people’s stories in an authentic way is vitally important, and we are taking the learnings from this forward.”
The veteran grew up in care and served in the Army from 2018 to 2023, including in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. He left the service because of mental ill-health and knee injuries.
He said he became homeless “through no fault of my own” and that his experience of seeking accommodation was made worse by questions from a senior housing officer about his military service, including whether he had “killed anyone in places such as Iraq”.
Chesterfield Borough Council said it could not comment on individual cases, but said it was “not council policy” to ask people who had served in the military whether they had killed anyone.
A spokesman said the council recognised why such a question could be distressing, adding that officers followed national homelessness legislation and guidance. This recognised that military service could affect a person’s housing situation, wellbeing and ability to cope with civilian life, he said.
Shelter received government grants worth nearly £27 million between 2021 and 2025.
