Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Night shelter idea means well but won’t help, says homeless charity
Green Party launches petition and says city centre makeover is ‘a vanity exercise’ Phone app lets the public help
A homelessness charity has poured cold water on calls for the council to scrap a £640,000 city centre makeover and build a permanent night shelter for rough sleepers instead.
The Canterbury and District Green Party says cash set aside for the project in St George’s Street could be better spent on helping the city’s homeless.
But Catching Lives – which runs a day centre in Station Road East – says, although well-intentioned, creating a new night shelter is not the solution and would be too expensive to run.
It was responding to an e-petition launched by the Green party urging “out-of-touch” councillors to rethink the city centre spruceup, which is expected to be signed off at the regeneration and property meeting on March 16.
The petition was posted online in the same week the council was criticised for spending almost £6,000 on medals and a Champagne bash for former long- serving councillors. Green party spokesman Henry Stanton said: “We call on the council to give up on its ludicrous plan of cosmetic changes to the top of the High Street.
“It is an emperor’s new clothes vanity exercise and a very expensive window dressing that will only benefit national chain stores.
“It does nothing for our local independent businesses and our conversations with residents show they want the money spent on a permanent shelter for the homeless.
“The number of people sleeping on the streets of Canterbury is a disgrace and the council should be ashamed of itself.
“A council that chooses to borrow £74m to buy half the Whitefriars shopping centre but not to look after its homeless, while sipping champagne and awarding each other gold medals, smacks of an out-of-touch elite.”
Last week, figures revealed Canterbury has the 8th highest proportion of rough sleepers in the country, with 50 people estimated to be living on the city’s streets. Catching Lives already runs a night shelter during the winter at church halls, while extra overnight beds were funded by the council at the day centre as temperatures plummeted in recent weeks.
But manager Terry Gore says the issue of homelessness in Canterbury cannot be solved by building a permanent night shelter.
He said: “I can understand why people think that way and want to put a roof over the heads of those sleeping on the streets at night, especially in the cold, but it is not as straightforward as that.
“For us to run a permanent night shelter would cost around A mobile phone app could help charities to care for the city’s homeless.
Streetlink allows the public to let Catching Lives and Porchlight know when they are worried about a rough sleeper.
The user then gets told what action has been taken.
For information, visit streetlink.org.uk.
£300,000 a year and not tackle the main problem. It is the lack of access to long-term accommodation for the homeless that needs addressing.”
To sign the petition, which runs until March 10, visit www. canterbury.gov.uk and search e-petitions.
Yesterday, ( Wednesday) it had more than 200 signatures. It needs 3,000 to activate a debate at a meeting of the full council.
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