Homeless charity’s plans for network of eco-pods to get rough sleepers off the street

A homeless charity is planning to place eco-friendly pods around Brighton and Hove to help get rough sleepers off the streets.

Sussex Homeless Support (SHS) currently runs a homeless bus which provides shelter to homeless people on Brighton seafront.

Now, it wants to go a step further and place scores of temporary housing pods on unused council land around the city.

Jim Deans from SHS said the charity has been planning the pods for some time, and the components to make the first one are arriving in the UK imminently.

The charity hopes to install the first one on land at the University of Brighton’s Moulsecoomb campus, subject to approval from university bosses.

He said: “I think that they’re really exciting – what they are, how they work. We have gathered so much speed recently that the components for the first one are now arriving.

“The answer to solving the homelessness crisis has always been accommodation, not constant night shelters or temporary accommodation hostels.

“We have always known that we wanted to have a self contained unit that one person can live in – but not a shipping container.

“Shipping containers raise as many problems as they solve. They’re metal boxes which are refrigerators in winter and ovens in the summer.

“Right from day one we have always said that’s not under consideration.

“We believe that these will achieve as close to zero carbon – that they could be heated with a 500w heater for just 12p a day.”

SHS has been in preliminary talks with Brighton and Hove City Council, and has drawn up a list of about 20 possible pockets of council-owned land where pods could be placed on a temporary basis.

He said: “We would just need temporary meanwhile use because the pods are not permanently grounded. You screw the foundations into the ground a bit like stick houses in the far east.

“In five years time when the meanwhile use is up, you just lift the pod up and it goes on the back of a normal truck and can be driven down a normal road to the next location.

“We want to have 200 pods, wherever we can find small bits of land that we can get a meanwhile use on a peppercorn rent.

“We have got funding for the first one – one of our trustees has made a loan to use and we have made an application through the Community Land Trust for funding to completely finish all the designs and all the development on it and deliver the first one in paper.

“Our target is to produce them for less than £15,000 per unit – the same price as a bus shelter in Moulsecoomb.

“We are dealing with people who are getting dumped on the street. Some of their stories are so fixable quickly, it’s embarrassing that the council hasn’t sorted it out. They can’t get benefits and they deteriorate really quickly and they learn the skills of the street even quicker to survive.

“There would be criteria for getting a pod – the main one would be cooperating with the project.

“This would be a solution which isn’t costing the council anything. The most we are asking for is a peppercorn rent for the five year lease, and it could potentially solve part of the housing crisis.

“We would go through the planning process – it’s not clear whether we need planning permission or not. We are working with the council’s housing right now to establish what we need lawfully. Because it’s meanwhile use, it’s very different to building a permanent house.”

A council spokeswoman said: “It is the council’s understanding that Sussex Homeless Support (SHS) has submitted a bid for funding from Homes England (Community Housing Fund) to support the development of a pod prototype to provide accommodation to former rough sleepers.

“No specific council owned land has been identified.”