Spring Update from Anna

Hello and I hope this finds you safe and well in the difficult time we are living in at the moment.

I have been fortunate to speak on the telephone with many of the lovely people who are interested in being part of our Tonic community over the last few weeks. We have had some great conversations and it has been inspiring to learn more about you all. I am really excited to think how wonderful the Tonic community will be when we have a place to call home.

Thank you to everyone who completed the Building Safe Choices survey, we had over 600 responses and are now busy analysing these with the help of Professor Andrew King from the University of Surrey. We will be producing the report on the findings to share next month.

Since the Autumn we have been busy applying for additional funding to enable us to recruit three new team members, and we are really pleased that this funding has now been confirmed. We have been actively recruiting and are about to start the shortlisting process to find us our lovely new team. We are extremely grateful to Comic Relief, the Mercers Company, Barrow Cadbury, the Tudor Trust, Trust for London and the GLA Community Housing Fund for their support to enable Tonic to take our important next steps forward.

We have been working closely with a housing association partner over the last year and we are hoping to announce the details of our first Tonic homes, as soon as we have confirmation of the required loan finance from the GLA.

We have also made some structural changes to Tonic to be able to provide affordable housing. On 6th February 2020 Tonic Housing Association Ltd was registered as a Community Benefit Society with the Financial Conduct Authority. This is now our charitable parent company with Tonic Living CIC still being operational as our non-charitable subsidiary. This sets us up for future opportunities, though there is still a lot of work to do for us to become a Registered Provider of Social Housing which is required to provide affordable and social rented homes. We believe this is very important for us to do, in order to create a long term community asset, as there is no LGBT+ specific Registered Provider of Social Housing in the country.

Finally, I would just like to do a shout out to our friends at Opening Doors London, who have been fundraising to expand their telefriending service for LGBT people over 50 experiencing isolation. Thank you for all your great work and the fabulous ‘wear and share’ t-shirt!

If you are interested in finding out more about Tonic, please register your interest and we will be in touch with you.

Keep safe, Anna