Millionaire hotel owner, Lawrence Kenwright, will host eighty homeless people for a special Christmas lunch at Liverpool’s Alma De Cuba restaurant tomorrow.
It follows his decision to open an unused building as homeless shelter in Liverpool City Centre.
Last week, Mr Kenwright, once on the brink of homeless himself, started a wave of charity that has shook the city into action.In the space of just seven days, 82 homeless people have left the streets of Liverpool to take shelter in Kingsway House, a building in the city’s business district owned by hotel firm Signature Living.
The project began on when Lawrence Kenwright, the founder of Signature Living Hotels, snapped, thinking the amount of homeless people out in the cold shamed our society.
As temperatures dropped below zero, homeless from across the city were invited to a warm, welcoming environment staffed by volunteers and workers from Signature Living.
People were given hot meals, sleeping bags, blankets and showers.
Official estimates say there are 21 homeless people in Liverpool. But anyone who lives in the city will be able to count that number on Bold Street alone. Famed for fancy restaurants, the street is lined with quiet, desolate-looking homeless people wrapped in whatever blankets they can find.
At Kingsway House, demand was so great that a second floor of the building has been opened up to the homeless, with separate areas for homeless people with dogs, while there are also separate rooms so that women feel safe.
The Christmas lunch is just the latest gesture of goodwill from Mr Kenwright.
Lawrence Kenwright said: “It is easy for wealthy people to shut themselves off from the rest of society. At work, they go from meeting to meeting with people just like them. They go for dinner at nice restaurants. They step over people like the ones we’re helping as they spend hundreds in the shops for Christmas. They try not to look them in the eye.
“It is disgraceful. We need to help those who have nothing. Because otherwise, what does it say about us as people?
“I made a fortune in the early 00s, but I lost everything in the recession.
I had no home, and had to rely on friends and family. Had I not had incredible friends and family, I’d have been on the streets. The experience will never leave me, and when I saw homeless people on the streets in the cold, frankly I had had enough.
“I’m hoping to make a small difference through the homeless shelter and by putting on this special Christmas lunch at Alma De Cuba. We’re hopefully going to make the Christmas lunch a day to remember for eighty homeless people.”