Fifteen homeless people who are staying at the Signature Living Kingsway House shelter in Liverpool have volunteered to go out into the city centre and help clean up the streets of Liverpool this afternoon.
Daniel Bolshaw, one of the homeless guests who is staying at the shelter approached Signature Living’s Chairman Lawrence Kenwright – who was at the shelter himself volunteering – with the idea. Daniel asked if he could get a group of the homeless guests together at the shelter to go out and help clean the streets of Liverpool each week.
The move comes after Liverpool’s street cleansing teams have been under pressure to deal with the increased issue of litter across the city which is being blamed on homeless people.
The homeless guests will be out today from 1pm starting at Castle Street and then each week across the city targeting hotspot areas, helping to clean the streets of Liverpool and will be identified by the high vis “Signature Shelter” tabards.
Lawrence Kenwright Chairman of Signature Living who opened Kingsway House to give a temporary shelter to the homeless said;
“This was an idea by one of our homeless guests who genuinely wanted to go out into the community and put something back by helping to clean up the streets in the city. He and many others at the shelter wanted to pay something back now that they have a shelter to stay in and are not on the streets. Now that these homeless guests have a roof over the head and somewhere safe to stay this merely reinforces the need for a joined up thinking and approach to how we tackle homelessness.”
He continued; “ If you give a homeless person shelter, a roof over their head, and an opportunity to work and get clean from substance abuse, then we are half way there. This not only restores that persons dignity and pride but gives them a sense of purpose and a reason to re integrate back into society. Many of the homeless people I have met on the streets and in our shelter are not there by choice and are often in that position through circumstances out of their control.
This situation can happen to any one of us. With austerity measures in place and councils being required to slash tens of millions of pounds from their budgets, its time that the private and public sectors collaborated. We want to work hand in hand with the local councils, outreach services and agencies to tackle homelessness and its wider social issues. The very agencies that are put in place to help the vulnerable and homeless are not working together effectively and instead are fighting between themselves to secure funding rather than a joined up collaborative approach and thinking”
Currently there is an estimated 307,000 people who are homeless in the UK with key cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham Manchester and Bristol amongst some of the worst affected regions outside of London. The Signature Living Kingsway House Shelter opened its doors on the 8th December receiving 16 homeless people who required shelter and within days this had risen to over 82 men, women and dogs.
Kenwright added; “There is no denying that a proportion of the issue around litter and waste is being created by homeless people, but what choice do they have but to put what few belongings they have down on a pavement somewhere? The wider issue of needles, drug and alcohol use and the litter created from this is just a symptom of the wider homeless issue. By providing homeless shelters across the city this will help take our homeless people off the streets and in turn reduce the wider problem of associated litter waste from the homeless”
The response from the homeless people at Kingsway House follows on from recent media coverage in the Echo about the state of and scale of the litter problem in Liverpool city centre.
A spokesman for Signature Living said; “ As a result of the coverage in the Echo about the scale of the problem in the city centre our homeless guests at the Kingsway House shelter wanted to do their bit. They wanted to show the people of Liverpool that even homeless people care about their city, the streets have been home to many of them. They want people to know that they too can be selfless, despite the bleak outlook of their own lives and personal situations. Many of the homeless people at our shelter never expected themselves to be in the situations they are in today and homeless.”
Only yesterday a homeless man was found dead in Bournemouth under a flyover in a car park after the local council removed his sleeping bag and possessions which they regarded and deemed as rubbish and litter.