IKEA Real Life Room Sets
Over 250,000 people experiencing homelessness in the UK are forced to live in cramped and unsafe temporary accommodation. To highlight this, Shelter and IKEA built Real Life Room Sets. They’re based on real stories of people experiencing homelessness and were placed amongst the more stylised room sets in IKEA’s London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol stores. The Real Life room sets were also featured in the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to raise awareness of UK’s housing crisis.
Copy on the outside panel
Could you live here?
Thousands of families experiencing homelessness have to.
This room is a real-life example of temporary accommodation where hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been made homeless are forced to live. Step inside and experience the real cramped and unhygienic living conditions they had to endure—not for one night or a few weeks, but for years on end.
The room sets were based on real-life case stories and these stories were featured on a poster inside the room so shoppers could get a real sense of what people who lived in these conditions went through.
Room set 1- Clare
Homeless after escaping an abusive relationship, Claire and her three children lived in a room that looked like this. The cupboards were broken, the wallpaper was peeling off and her one-year-old baby was crawling on a dirty floor. There were bloodstains on the mattress and let’s not even talk about the state of the bathroom.
Things were so bad that after a while Claire took the drastic step of sending her children back to their father —the same abusive partner she had escaped from—and moved into her car.
Sadly, Claire’s story isn’t unique. Hundreds of thousands of families are languishing in places like this because they have nowhere else to go. IKEA have joined forces with Shelter to highlight this issue and call on the government to build more 90,000 more social homes a year. So people like Claire have a safe, secure place to call home.
Room set 2- Channah
Homeless after being served a no-fault eviction notice, Channah and her three daughters were forced to live in a room like this. Can you imagine four people living here?
Channah had to sleep on a pull-out mattress while the others shared the bunk beds. The space or lack of it had a detrimental effect on everyone. Channah’s fourteen-year-old daughter struggled at school. Jasmine, the oldest daughter had nowhere to study and was forced to sit on the toilet while preparing for her exams. The bathroom was cold, making her feet go numb and the mould exacerbated her asthma. As if this weren’t enough, the family had to put up with constant invasions of privacy and had their belongings searched by complete strangers.
Sadly, Channah’s story isn’t unique. Hundreds of thousands of families are languishing in places like this because they have nowhere else to go. IKEA have joined forces with Shelter to highlight this issue and call on the government to build more 90,000 more social homes a year. So people like Claire have a safe, secure place to call home.
Room set 3- Sam
Homeless after her relationship broke down, Sam and her children were placed in a hostel room like this. Sam is a prison officer and to her horror, discovered that one of the hostel’s residents was an ex-offender from her work. Prompted by safety concerns, she moved out, sleeping in a car for seven weeks while her children stayed with a friend.
Finally, she was given new accommodation which was not much better than the first. There was black mould everywhere and a lingering smell of cannabis. There was a hole in the door where the letterbox should have been, and on two occasions, she had to fend off intruders who tried to break into her room. Worst of all, Sam was separated from her three children yet again because her temporary accommodation was an hour and forty minutes away from their school. The constant upheavals and separation tested the resilience of the family.
Sadly, Channah’s story isn’t unique. Hundreds of thousands of families are languishing in places like this because they have nowhere else to go. IKEA have joined forces with Shelter to highlight this issue and call on the government to build more 90,000 more social homes a year. So people like Claire have a safe, secure place to call home.