40 Stories of Impact: Putting young people at the heart of everything.

As part of our 40th anniversary campaign: 40 Stories of Impact, we sat down with our Chief Executive, Paul Morrish, to chat about his introduction to LandAid in 2015 – the year LandAid put young people and youth homelessness at the heart of everything we do.

03/02/2026

Nearly thirty years from its first days, LandAid made a pivotal decision.

When Paul Morrish joined as Chief Executive in 2015, we sharpened our focus and made a long-term commitment: LandAid would dedicate itself to helping end youth homelessness in the UK.

From then on, our grants would support charities working specifically with young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. One issue. One industry. One clear mission.

Today, that focus still drives everything we do – and it’s what makes the partnership between LandAid and the property industry so powerful.

Today, we sat with Paul to have a chat about his first days at LandAid, what inspired his decision, and what we have come to as an organisation today. Have a read…

What brought you to LandAid in the first place?

I had applied for several CEO-level roles but kept getting rejections and always seemed to be the fourth of four candidates. But I had been looking for roles in my previous area of expertise – adult social care.

Then I saw this job and was drawn to the fact that it was an opportunity to go back to an area I had spent much of my career working in – homelessness and specifically youth homelessness, and to lead an industry-wide programme of change. It seemed really exciting, and it was new.

I hadn’t worked before in corporate fundraising, and I knew nothing about real estate or property, but I was convinced that LandAid could make a real difference and I was convinced I could too.

What was LandAid like when you first stepped into your role as Chief Executive?

Small, perfectly formed, but a little uncertain.

Based out of a small office at the BPF on Haymarket that we shared with WPA/CPA – it was snug! But the team was incredibly welcoming and helpful – as were the fabulous trustees – which was handy as my first week involved drafting the annual budget, and a speaking engagement to around 300 guests at the annual LandAid Debate held in City Hall.

But the biggest challenge was about purpose. LandAid was a well-run funder, but it was supporting loads of quite disparate charities supporting ‘young, disadvantaged people’.That’s a lot of young people. And we really weren’t very big. To underscore the point, our supporters were unclear about what we were really trying to achieve – and that was a problem.

What inspired LandAid’s transition to focus solely on youth homelessness in the UK?

We needed focus. We needed direction. We needed a strong call to action – for us, for our ultimate beneficiaries, and for our industry.

We wanted to tackle a significant social issue. We wanted to work on something that people in our industry could relate to. We wanted to be bold. And we wanted to focus on something about which our industry was particularly well placed to help.

We explored a range of ideas for causes we could engage with. In the end, and perhaps unsurprisingly, we settled on the devastating crisis of youth homelessness. LandAid had already funded a number of charities working in the area, so there was some knowledge in-house. But it was also an area about which I knew a fair amount, and about which I felt passionate.

The trustees at the time could see that it mattered to me, and recognised the role our industry could play, and it was they who ultimately set LandAid on its current course.

How have you seen LandAid evolve during your time here?

We’re bigger, and we’re better (but I would say that!).

Income has more than doubled. We’ve focused on fewer and much larger events – we introduced the SleepOut in 2018 which continues to be our most successful event annually. We’ve strengthened the relationships with our fabulous supporters, individually and at a corporate level. We’ve forged some amazing partnerships, including our legendary liaison with StreetSmart, and our close collaboration with Homewards, The Royal Foundation’s homelessness initiative. And we’ve set up and are supported by five regional and national hubs, driven by enthusiastic senior property professionals giving their time to help raise funds and our profile.

We’ve become a more strategic grant-maker recently entering into multi-year partnerships for the first time, and gradually broadening the types of grants we make, from capital-only, to grants for employability projects and for initiatives that help young people access the PRS or sustain their tenancies better.

We’ve grown our pro-bono programme massively providing a huge range of opportunities for professionals within our industry to put their expertise to good use, saving charities hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The way we communicate with our supporters has become (I hope everyone agrees) smarter and whole lot more sophisticated. And, recognising that we have a responsibility to share what we learn from our charity partners with the folks with the biggest levers, we’re now working with others to encourage better policy making in the field of youth homelessness.

We’ve got better at sharing stories about the young people our grants support, at demonstrating the impact we have and the social value we deliver, and at explaining the value we add to our industry’s generosity.

And all that is down to some fabulous trustees and committee members, and an outstanding team of wonderful individuals (both those in the team now, and those I’ve had the honour to work with over the last decade) from whom I’ve learned so much.

Lastly, what do you hope for LandAid’s future? Where do you see us in the next 40 years?

As we reflect on record numbers of young people experiencing homelessness in 2026, more than anything I hope that by 2066, no young person in the UK experiences homelessness other than very briefly, and very rarely.

I hope that we will all have played a key role in helping to prevent young people from becoming homeless in the first place, in helping to provide the safe, sustainable and affordable homes our people need, and in helping to provide generations of young people who might never have seen real estate as a career destination, opportunities to shape the future of the built environment.

And when we’ve played our part in overcoming youth homelessness, I hope that we will have turned our attention to some other important social problem. And we’ll have done so knowing that when we work together we can achieve extraordinary things, that we have proven ability to deliver social action alongside sustainable and profitable real estate, and that we can have a great time together on the way.

Become part of LandAid's history.

Reflecting on our past has made every single person working at LandAid proud to be part of the change we are creating, along with the property sector, for young people experiencing homelessness. You too can become part of changing the history of youth homelessness.

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