Homeless Charity in Bournemouth helping during Winter Weather

Bournemouth based Andrew Talbot, a charity manager for ‘We are Humans’ a homeless shelter in Bournemouth says that the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council have “Got a problem”.

In the midst of January weather with further risk developing from Storm Eowyn Andrew has voiced concerns about the conditions.

“Wet is the worst place to be. Winds and rains. It’s a danger to life.

“We have a purpose-built night shelter here in BCP that BCP Council refused to reinstate and put back to its proper purpose of a night shelter.”

“That night shelter has 42 rooms, it has a day centre downstairs, it has showers, it has washing facilities, it has kitchens. BCP’s got a problem. The problem is rough sleeping and it’s a problem that they’ve created and they’re neglecting to deal with.

BUzz news have reached out to BCP Council for comment but have not yet heard back.

“I don’t want to be here doing this, but someone has to” said Andrew, remarking about what he sees as failures from the BCP Council.

“BCP’s one of the worst performing councils for dealing with these issues. But it’s an epidemic that’s spreading across the UK, so we need to look at our governments, we need to look at our civil servants, and we need change, or we need to just stand up and create change ourselves, which is what we’re about,” he continued.

The BCP area in Dorset is home to around 400,000 people, the area has the largest homeless population outside of London, which has a population of close to 10 million.

Speaking to Andrew, he spoke about the data set released from the BCP Council, “It isn’t the usual demographic of single white males that, for one reason or another, find themselves homeless. Well, I mean, I had a look at some statistics on the BCP Council website and the quickest growing demographic for homelessness is actually people between the ages of 65 and 75 has increased by 8.9%, which is not really something you’d expect.”

With this, Andrew accuses the BCP Council of ‘Profiting off the back of homelessness.’