She was a member of the Church of England Archbishop’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, which produced the groundbreaking and influential Faith in the City report in 1985, and became Clerk of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Homelessness and Housing Need in 1989. In 1998 she was awarded an MBE for services to homeless people, before receiving the Cross of St Augustine from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002. Robina was Director of CHAS for 16 years, before becoming chief executive of Housing Justice, the new organisation formed when CHAS merged into an ecumenical partnership with the Churches National Housing Coalition in 2003. She retired in Autumn 2006.

Robina (62) is clear that the Church in the UK is called be involved in issues of housing justice: “Christianity is about the ultimate dignity of the human person,” she says. “We are called to follow Jesus, who made the deliberate choice to be born into a relatively humble background and live on the margins of society, and again and again to give witness to the fact that his mission was for everyone.

“In the Gospel of Mark his first miracle is to a man living in some ruins, probably mentally ill, who was regarded as possessed by demons. Jesus didn’t only reach out to people like this but he brought them into the community too. As a Church we have to be involved in the dignity of the human person, which means fighting against everything that erodes that.

“A house is one of the most basic human needs. If you don’t have a home you can’t grow into the person you were intended to be. It’s more than a roof over your head; it’s somewhere you can feel secure, relax and have friends and family over. We live in a relatively wealthy country and it’s scandalous that we allow people not to even have this basic need served.”

She also believes that homelessness is a problem in every community in this country, even in more wealthy areas where it might not be immediately obvious: “If you really dig, you will find a housing problem in your area. It might not be as visible as the people sleeping rough on the streets of London but it is there.
”There are homeless people everywhere. They might be sleeping on friends’ floors, living in temporary accommodation or even sleeping rough in places that are less visible, like empty buildings. The problems are slightly different everywhere, but if you look, you’ll find people in need where you are.”

The landscape of homelessness has changed significantly in the last 30 years. In many cases, there has been positive progress, such as the introduction of the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, which gave rights to housing to families with children, pregnant women and some older people.
“Before this, what people were entitled to varied wildly across different local authorities,” says Robina. “You’d get some places where women who were seven or eight months pregnant and sleeping on park benches, because the local authority wouldn’t house them until the baby was born. The Act was a huge step forward.”

Provision available for those sleeping on the streets has also improved during Robina’s time in the field. However, she says there are now new challenges:
“There is also a lot less being spent on affordable rented housing. More and more of the people coming to Housing Justice for advice are working in decent jobs but can’t find accommodation. We desperately need more rented housing, some subsidised, some not, to help counter this.”

The issue of immigration, and asylum seekers in particular, is never far from the headlines, and presents further housing challenges.

“One area where some would say we have failed is in getting across the message about the needs of these people, and the benefits they can bring to this country.
“In the late 1990s I went to a service in Westminster Abbey marking the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the first Asian community that had been thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin. They’d arrived with literally nothing but added tremendous value to their communities and were contributing to the prosperity of the country as a whole through their tax and NI contributions. As Christians we are called to befriend the stranger in our midst. This is a big opportunity for churches to come together.”

This changing landscape brings new challenges for the Church, but Robina believes now is a time of opportunity for Christians to influence decision-making:
“The government is receptive to new ways of providing housing, and the Church can show locally what can be done in terms of, for example befriending. If someone has been sleeping rough and is very damaged as a result, they could end up feeling desperately lonely if they are eventually lucky enough to be given a home. Away from their support structures, they could easily give up and fail. There are so many opportunities for the Church to reach out and help them settle in and settle down.”

As retirement beckons, Robina is looking forward to a more relaxed pace of life, but will continue to be involved in housing justice issues. She says that responding to God’s call can lead in excited and unexpected directions:

“My career has been characterised by the fact that I haven’t made plans. I’ve just responded to opportunities. Someone said that life is like seeing a tapestry on the wrong side. You only see the knots and joins. It’s only at the end that you can go around to the other side and see the pattern running through it all. Looking back I can see the thread running through my life, but at the time I just wanted to respond to a faith calling. It is a vocation, but in some sense, you only see that afterwards.”