This is for ex-forces, coming from a referral path. If you do not have this, we can assist you in getting one from a veteran association.

A room in a London flatshare costs £800 to £1,200 a month. For that you get 10 to 12 square metres, a kitchen shared with three to five people in a cramped residential layout, one bathroom between four or five, bills on top at £100 to £150 a month, and agent and referencing fees before you move in.

A room here costs £300 to £600 a month. The room is 20 to 24 square metres, sometimes larger. The kitchen is a full-sized commercial or hospitality space. Showers run at one per three, toilets at one per two or three. Bills are included. No agent fees. No referencing fees.

The price is lower and the space is better because the arrangement is different. You occupy a managed commercial property under licence, alongside fellow veterans with stable jobs. The building runs under an Operating Manual. The standards are not optional. If you served, none of this is unfamiliar.

One room in each building goes to a homeless veteran. A man who served and ended up on the street. He gets twelve months, a structured programme, and a deadline: stable employment and independent living by the end of the year. Where the building allows it, a charity operates a soup kitchen and shower facility for other homeless veterans referred through veteran associations. The full story is at veteraninneed.org.

The standards, the Operating Manual, the alcohol restriction, the discipline in the building, all exist because someone in this building is putting his life back together. The environment either helps him or it does not. That is why the rules are what they are. That is why we are selective about who lives here.

The proposition is simple. A room at a fraction of London rent, among people who served, in a building that does something worth doing. If that works for you, read on.