Homeless to waive benefits for work and a bed

Hull City Council is considering providing a long-term lease of land and a capital grant of £100,000 to help set up an Emmaus community at Lockwood Street.

The Emmaus UK federation already provides 590 beds at 24 sites across the country and hopes to offer 30 more in Hull as part of its drive to increase the overall number to 750 by 2017.

Although about 20 organisations provide help for homeless people in the city with more than 700 temporary beds available, none offers the long-term support the charity says they need.

Those joining Emmaus Hull would forego all benefits except housing benefit in return for accommodation and a job for as long as they need. The social enterprise, which would cost £3m to establish, would refurbish furniture, operate a bulky waste collection and recycling service, as well as providing a community cafe and internet facility where residents, known as companions, would work.

The aim is to give homeless people the sense of purpose, belonging and security that equips them to rejoin mainstream society.

Chris O’Donnell, former chief executive of Smith & Nephew, one of Hull’s leading companies, is the project’s chief fundraiser.

He said: “Emmaus is very different from other accommodation for homeless people. The essential difference is Emmaus provides a homeless person with a bed and a job, which is the reason for getting out of the bed. What that does, it enables the homeless person to be part of a community and to regain their dignity and self-esteem and get some very useful skills to go and rejoin society.

“The community we are planning will take 30 people at one time and the aim is they will then go on to regular accommodation and regain jobs, not all of them will, but most of them will resettle. We expect around 40 people a year to benefit from this facility and get them from being homeless to being back in society.”

Mr O’Donnell said fundraising was continuing to raise the final £300,000 of the start-up cost, although the project is expected to generate a surplus by 2017/18.

In a city with increasing numbers of people sleeping rough, or at risk of homelessness for a variety of reasons, the project also offers economic as well as social benefits, with research showing that for every £1 invested in an Emmaus community there is an £11 return in terms of reduced dependency on benefits, reduced reoffending rates, and less impact on the health service.

Latest figures from the Government showed there were more than 2,309 people sleeping rough in the UK in February, a six per cent rise on the previous year.

No figures for Hull were available, but former city council leader Patrick Doyle, the chairman of Emmaus Hull, who has run the St Charles drop-in facility in Hull for the last 12 years, said he has seen a dramatic increase in homelessness recent years, with numbers tending to rise even further during winter.

“We have seen a phenomenal increase in the last few years,” he said. “Yesterday we had 71 people come through the doors and the other day it was 87.

“There’s an increase in people coming in asking for food parcels, which we don’t do, we pass them on to Jubilee Church, and the pressure on food banks is rising - people are desperate for food and accommodation.”

He added: “The beauty of Emmaus is it deals with the totality of the person. It provides accommodation but it also provides work and an opportunity to get on your own feet again.”