The Social Bite Village, Edinburgh
Welcome to the original Social Bite Village. We’ve supported over 100 people experiencing homelessness since 2018.
Our Edinburgh Village is an innovative, highly supported community run in partnership with another homelessness charity, Cyrenians.
It’s an alternative to traditional forms of temporary accommodation, providing a calm and dignified environment for up to 20 people affected by homelessness.
Residents normally live here for around 12-18 months. With wraparound support and opportunities to build skills and enter employment, it’s a place to rediscover hope and start the journey to independence.
A vibrant community
We’re helping people rebuild their lives in a community they help to shape.
For a community to be truly transformational, members must have chances to shape it at every stage. When people start feeling that sense of agency, their confidence and optimism blossoms.
At our Edinburgh Village, there’s a large, central community hub where residents can cook, eat and socialise together. The hub is also the base for many training and support activities. An active weekly timetable is shaped by residents’ interests and can range from walks, bike rides, yoga and DJ sessions, to bowling, cinema trips and a cooking club. There are also opportunities to learn new skills, volunteer, and explore moving into employment.
When permanent accommodation becomes available, residents are supported into their new home and helped to make this transition stick. The door is always open at the village though - former residents are welcome to come back and remain part of the wider community.
As each person moves on, a new community member joins, with support and mentoring from fellow community members.
Specialist support
The Edinburgh Village is a partnership between Social Bite and Cyrenians.
Our partner Cyrenians provide a highly skilled and experienced team — a mix of staff and residential volunteers with community living expertise and experience supporting people with histories of trauma. They’re positive role models for residents, and a consistent and supportive presence on site. They also offer health and wellbeing activities and help to shape village life by running community meetings.
Volunteers are a key part of life at the village, providing more informal peer-to-peer support for residents. These relationships can be invaluable in helping to build trust, friendships and a sense of community.
Beautiful, sustainable homes
Each home at the Edinburgh Village is a thoughtfully designed “nest house” built by Ecosystems Technologies: a compact, energy‑efficient timber mini‑home with its own front door, kitchen, bathroom and living space, arranged around shared green areas for a neighbourhood feel. A beautiful home can have a profound effect on someone’s wellbeing.
Both the houses and community hub have been built using innovative cross-laminated Scottish timber, making locally sourced wood strong and stable enough for housebuilding. The timber is processed through Scotland’s only vacuum press at the BE-ST factory in Blantyre, then manufactured into complete homes at Ecosystems’ factory in Invergordon using a highly efficient, weather-protected process. The houses have an estimated lifespan of 60 years.
Off-site construction cuts total build time down to just months. Buildings are made in advance to exact standards and on-site work is reduced to groundworks, before the finished units are delivered, craned into place, and installed on light-touch foundations.
We’re moving to Granton Waterfront
The Social Bite Edinburgh Village is relocating (less than a mile away).
Coming soon: a brand new community hub, and seven new and improved homes. All embedded in green space, with amazing views across the Forth and good local amenities — a site chosen based on feedback from our residents.
The decision to relocate was prompted by the expected end of the current lease on land donated by Edinburgh City Council — it was always part of our plan to make good use of a “meanwhile site” that would otherwise have been unoccupied. Fortunately, the pre-fabricated houses were purposefully designed for easy relocation.
Help us build two new Social Bite Villages
Our experience in Edinburgh has shown that a supported accommodation model can break the cycle of homelessness for good.
We need you help to provide the same opportunity in South Lanarkshire and Dundee.
Find out more
Social Bite Villages
Find out about the whole approach to the Social Bite Villages and other locations.
Questions?
If you work in local authority housing and are interested in hearing how you could bring a Social Bite Village to your area, get in touch.