we are refurbishing and furnishing 2 houses to accommodate around 10 young street homeless people for a temporary period of rehabilitation and training so they can then go on to live independently when we help them secure permanent accommodation.
These street homeless young people cannot get rented accommodation from private landlords because they cannot meet the criteria for private renting, they are unemployed, have no address history, cannot afford top up rent even if they had entitlement to housing benefit, cannot get guarantors as often relationship between them and family is not cordial, some have mental health issues, hence cannot properly express themselves and have slipped through the social welfare system, etc.
Because of cuts in Government spending there is a huge shortage of these types of supported accommodation hence many of them are turned down by the system that should be looking after them.
While campaigning for the Government to increase spending in this area, we are appealing to the members of the public to help sponsor this project in the short term, especially as winter is setting in and most winter shelters in our community don't open until January and only run till March i.e 3 months in the whole year.
Even when these shelters operate, they only offer night spaces.
We aim to provide a home for these young ones while they are trying to find their feet. During the time spent in our sheltered lodgings we help them re-build their lives and therefore help break a vicious cycle of street homelessness and crime which many of them would otherwise face.