SafeSpace London lays off all staff after running out of funds

A London organization supporting sex workers, women and the LGBTQ+ community says it urgently need to raise money after the city ended their funding last spring, or else it cannot re-open its doors to the city's most at-risk.

SafeSpace London announced Wednesday it has laid off all of its staff and is returning to a volunteer-led organization. This comes months after it shut the doors at its Old East Village drop-in location in the fall.

The organization said it needs to raise $50,000 by the end of March to stabilize. 

"It is a space for sex workers and for trans folk that is essential anyway, but particularly essential in this moment," said SafeSpace board chair Rachel Berdan. "There's certainly some mourning that we're all experiencing and certainly some difficult feelings for us to be navigating."

SafeSpace needs the money to reboot its services, including access to peer support, donations and overnight beds, and to re-open a physical location, Berdan said, along with core operations. 

In a May 2024 meeting, city councillors voted against giving SafeSpace $138,000 to keep its location at the corner of Dundas and Lyle streets operational until the end of July.

Ward 4 Coun. Susan Stevenson, who voted against the funding renewal, said the original funding was meant to be a temporary measure for the winter.

"There was never any long-term commitment," said Stevenson. "The location was always problematic. There was already an oversaturation of services in Old East Village."

She said that if the group were to ask for the same funding today, her opinion would not change. 

Berdan said that beyond putting SafeSpace's name forward for an expression of interest in London's hubs plan, the organization has not tried to reach out to the city for funding again. 

Over the summer, Berdan said SafeSpace dug into its core funding and community donations to stay temporarily operational.

She said many Londoners have been supportive since the organization put out its most recent call for funds this week. As of Wednesday night, the GoFundMe page received more than $3,000 in donations. 

"There's a lot of love, a lot of care, and already some great momentum toward getting us back to where we can be in the community that we have been before, long-term," Berdan said.