Project to help homeless may be extended after launch success

A project to help homeless people in Bradford has proved so successful that it could be extended next year.

Throughout February the Inn Churches Shelter Project provided emergency accommodation for the homeless for seven nights a week at a different church each night.

It is hoped that next year the project will be extended to three months, and work is beginning on the setting up of a longer term shelter.

Canon Sam Randall, from the Bradford Diocese, who initiated the project, said: “It’s gone better than I could have dared to hope. We provided over 130 beds and saw around 36 different people come through the doors.

“The police were hugely supportive, bringing people in themselves, and even donated cash they had retrieved from the proceeds of crime. We had referrals from professional and voluntary agencies and it’s been a real indication that the present provision is inadequate.

“It was wonderful to see Christians from so many different traditions working together so positively. This is real and effective ecumenism. Several of the homeless, completely of their own volition, started going to church; a couple of them even making a Christian commitment.

“People’s lives have really been changed through this – it’s had a huge impact on both the volunteers and the homeless people. Most of us have no concept of what it is to be homeless, but every volunteer has been changed by meeting the special men and women we’ve been able to serve.”

Each church, staffed by church volunteers, hosted up to 16 people on a weekly rotation and provided a hot dinner and breakfast.

A total of 25 churches and 95 volunteers from across the Bradford area were involved.

Canon Randall added: “We’re now working longer term with a destitute asylum-seeker and five young men whom we’ve met through the project. But the truly heartbreaking aspect, however, was having to turn some people away as we only had so much capacity.”

The project worked alongside Bradford Council which has emergency provision for nights when the temperature drops below zero. The churches supplemented that and provided help regardless of the temperature.