Volunteers who have been staffing a night shelter at a Hove church have been thanked for their dedication.
They hosted 15 rough sleepers at All Saints in Hove for the final time last night as another local church takes over.
In a newsletter All Saints said: “The night shelter has finished for this year as the group of guests move on to a new network of churches offering shelter until the middle of March, co-ordinated by St Peter’s Church, Brighton.
“Each week we offered hot food and a safe night to 15 guests. In conversation, one of the guests described that there were 15 different reasons for needing shelter and 15 different needs in moving on.
“Twelve guests have now been housed since November and new people have been referred to the shelter.
“Thank you to all volunteers who gave their time and skills so cheerfully to make the practical tasks run smoothly and to sit alongside guests in friendship.
“Thank you also to Pizza Express, Hove, who donated pizzas for us all in Christmas week.”
The newsletter quoted feedback from one of the guests: “Genuinely sad to hear that last night was our last at All Saints, they were a real credit to the whole program and I’ve looked forward to going there for the past nine weeks.
“Please pass my sincerest compliments on to Avril and her team for a job exceptionally well done.”
Earlier this week, Tobias Lancaster, from St Peter’s Church, in Brighton, who is co-ordinating the Churches Winter Night Shelter project for a second year, was interviewed on The Vote on Latest TV.
Wonderful, thank you to all of the volunteers. I do wish that homelessness could be banished. There is space for everyone, so many empty commercial properties that could be used, at the very least as a temporary measure to keep people off the streets at night. To keep them safe.
We can ALL do something to help the current despicable state of affairs. Ensuring that SOMETHING goes into supermarket Foodbanks on every trip to Tesco, Co-op, Waitrose, whatever could be helping someone in an impossible bind to continue to pay their rent and not become one of the homeless on the street, forced out in spite of having jobs (many now)and not being either a drug addict or alcoholic.
Being housed often means not eating properly these days. I always ensure what I put in a foodbank is usefully nutritious and not just cheap starch (crap cereals and pasta). It is protein (tins of fish, say)and toiletries (loo rolls and soaps)that may actually be what is needed more than yet another bowl of pasta with nothing on it or bowl of cereal. Mix it up a bit. Tins of fruit, veg…
I see too many BIG BOXES of cheap cornflakes or rubbish pasta costing less than £1. piled into those containers.
Well done All Saints. It is something. I lay in bed last night thinking of people sleeping in that cold on our street. Its not on.