To Each According to Their Need
A founding rule of Food & Solidarity, not a slogan.
Need Does Not Arrive Fully Formed
It emerges through struggle, through conversation, through people testing what is possible and naming what is missing. Often, it only becomes clear once people begin acting together.
Someone comes for food and talks about rent. Someone asks about a bailiff letter and ends up talking about damp, exhaustion, fear of opening the door. Someone joins to pack parcels and six months later is sitting in Newcastle County Court with a neighbour they met at a meeting.
What looks like one problem reveals another beneath it. The rule exists because of this.
How Institutions Respond
Institutions prefer fixed answers. They decide in advance what people are allowed to need, then build systems to deliver just that.
Anything outside the frame is treated as confusion, dishonesty, or failure. You needed food, not housing help. You needed housing help, not a vote on how the money is spent.
The Rule
At Food & Solidarity, "to each according to their need" is not a slogan. It is a founding rule of the organisation, written into how it works.
- Every member pays a sliding scale fee: £3/month for unwaged workers, one hour's wage for higher earners
- Every member receives the same: two food parcels a month, regardless of what they pay in
- Every member has one vote
- Every member can bring proposals to the collective
- The funds belong to everyone
What you receive is determined by what you need, not by what you paid in.
From Support to Collective Action
As patterns become clearer, our response changes.
A member facing eviction is not a case to be managed. They are a member, with the same standing as every other member, which means the organisation moves with them. Grace went to Newcastle County Court with members beside her. Dennis trained for his eviction in Leazes Park. Breamish House residents delivered one collective letter and had repairs done in 24 hours.
What feels like a personal crisis is recognised as a shared condition.
Needs that appear separate are understood as connected, rent, food, debt, childcare, safety.
Working Through Contradictions
Not all needs can be met in the same way. Sometimes they pull in different directions. Sometimes resources are limited.
These tensions are real, and pretending otherwise helps no one.
The point is not to erase contradiction, but to work through it together.
When decisions are made collectively, priorities emerge from lived reality, not from theory or bureaucracy. We act, we learn from the results, and we return to the community with what we've learned, adjusting, correcting, sharpening our response.
Not Charity, Not Service Delivery
This is not charity and it is not service delivery.
It is a process.
What "To Each According to Their Need" Means
It means that a member who joined last week and a member who has been here since 2020 have the same vote at the same meeting. It means the person who receives a food parcel this month may be the person who sits in court with a neighbour next month. It means resources are held collectively and decisions are made collectively.
Need is dynamic, shaped by material conditions, and clarified through acting together.
What people need today may not be what they need tomorrow. The rule has to be flexible enough to move with that reality, and so does the organisation.
Solidarity Is Not a Fixed Answer
It is a method, tested, corrected, and rebuilt in common.
Join Food & Solidarity Newcastle
Pay what your situation allows. Receive what you need. Vote on decisions. Bring proposals. The funds are collective, and so is everything else.
Become a MemberFrequently Asked Questions
What does "to each according to their need" mean at Food & Solidarity?
It is a founding rule of the organisation. Every member pays a sliding scale membership fee, £3/month for unwaged workers, one hour's wage for higher earners. Every member receives the same: two food parcels a month, regardless of what they pay in. Every member has one vote. Every member can bring proposals to the collective. The funds belong to everyone. What you receive is determined by what you need, not by what you paid in.
How does the sliding scale membership work?
£3/month for unwaged workers. £4/month for part-time or precarious workers. £10/month for minimum waged workers. One hour's wage per month for higher earners. Regardless of what members pay in, every member receives the same food parcels, has the same vote, and can bring the same proposals to member meetings. Join →
Is Food & Solidarity a charity?
No. Food & Solidarity is a democratic, member-led, non-profit organisation. Members receive food parcels and decide collectively how funds are spent. There are no donors giving to recipients. Everyone pays in according to their means and receives according to their need. What we are →
Who can vote at Food & Solidarity?
Every member has one vote, regardless of how long they have been a member or how much they pay in. A member who joined last week and a member who has been here since 2020 have the same vote at the same meeting. Any member can bring proposals to the collective.
This April, Food & Solidarity is running a practical workshop on housing organising - how to act when someone near you is in trouble, and how neighbours can back each other up instead of dealing with landlords and councils alone.
The day before, we're also taking part in a booklet launch that came directly out of that work.
These events are about what happens when neighbours stop dealing with housing problems alone - and start acting together.
37% of private renters & around 40% of social renters are in poverty after housing costs and that many households are only pushed into poverty once rent is paid.
After housing costs matter because it shows what people have left to live on, not what they earn.
Freezing Local Housing Allowance while rents rise is deepening hardship. We see this every week in the lives of our members. But increasing this allowance in a housing system without rent regulation does not solve the problem.
Sometimes change doesn't start with a big plan. It starts with people talking about what they're seeing every day, and deciding they can't ignore it anymore. That's how this campaign began.
It Started at a Members' Meeting
At a regular Food and Solidarity members' meeting, child poverty came up again. Members talked about how the two-child benefit cap was affecting families, and how immigration rules like NRPF (No Recourse to Public Funds) meant some families couldn't get help at all.
Someone suggested: what if we actually organised around this?
The UK Poverty report, published annually by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is the authoritative analysis of poverty in the UK. Drawing on extensive data sources, it identifies who is most affected by poverty, tracks how levels have evolved over time, and examines what lies ahead. The report provides in-depth insights into overall poverty rates, deep poverty, and persistent poverty across different groups throughout the UK.
This Valentine’s Day, people across the North of England are choosing a different kind of love: comradely love. Love that looks like showing up for each other when rents rise, repairs are ignored, and eviction threats land on the doormat.
On 14 February 2026, housing groups, tenants, and people fed up with being pushed around by landlords and councils will come together in Sheffield for the Homes for Us North Grassroots Housing Gathering.
This isn’t a conference for professionals. It’s a gathering for people living in the housing crisis, and deciding to take action together, because nothing changes unless you and other affected people are directly involved.
Jan Forster estates limited recently called in administrators who downsized the company (reducing it to a single office and sacking staff) selling it off to the former managing director and daughter of the registered directors Angela Dennison (aka Angela Forster) as a phoenix company. The new company is DENNISON PROPERTY SERVICES LTD but will continue trading under Jan Forster Estates, in a triumph of personal vanity over brand viability.
What is a SLAPP?
A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) is not really about winning a legal case. It’s about stopping people from speaking.
SLAPPs are a misuse of the legal system. They involve bringing, or more commonly threatening, legal action that is weak, vague, or unmeritorious, using aggressive tactics to shut down lawful criticism or organising on matters of public interest.
The Housing Crisis Is Destroying Our Communities
When rents rise, whole neighbourhoods change. The people who built communities, who know their neighbours, who use the local school, the local shop, the food bank get pushed out. The housing crisis doesn't just affect renters. It hollows out the places we all live in.
Sky-high rents are forcing people to cut back on essentials like food and heating. Families are being pushed out of their homes altogether, cut off from family, friends, and community. Homelessness has reached record levels. There are an ever-increasing number of homeless deaths. Disabled renters face discrimination and cannot secure accessible homes. Institutionally racist housing associations and council landlords neglect and mismanage estates damaging our health and letting children like Awaab Ishak die.
This is not bad luck or mismanagement. It is the result of decades of political choices. For too long, successive governments have prioritised the desire of private developers and corporate landlords to make a profit over our need for affordable, secure, accessible homes. This can't go on. It's time to fight back.