Missing Homeless People St Matthias Park and St Judes Bristol

If you live or work in St Judes, or make the daily trudge to Cabot Circus Car Park, you will notice the small village of homeless people who were living in the area missing.

In the middle of December 2017, it was noticed that Bristol City Council were removing the tents and belongings of homeless people from St Matthias Park, saying this was because they were abandoned and a danger.

Now the homeless people who were very much a feature of the area are gone too.

Hopefully, they have managed to get a place with Caring in Bristol who ran its ‘Caring at Christmas’ project helping provide 70 rough sleepers with beds and a further 200 people with food and social opportunities during the festive period.

A further 100 extra bed spaces were also made for rough sleepers as part of the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP).

The SWEP provision only works when the Met Office predicts three consecutive nights or more of a zero degrees centigrade temperatures or below. It’s coordinated from the Compass Centre run by St Mungo’s with spaces allocated by their outreach team.

The Crisis Centre Ministries shelter scheme will then be open for three months from Friday 5 January 2018, with 12 churches providing 12 beds every night of the week. The scheme will be run by church community volunteers with St Mungo’s Outreach Team allocating spaces and helping those using them to find move-on accommodation.

Twelve churches will host the shelter over the 12 week period, with the project providing 12 beds every night of the week.

For those wanting to help, there are contactless donation stations in the Broadmead Shopping Quarter, which raised nearly £3000 during the first four months.

“It is free for people to stay at our night shelters but we rely heavily on fundraising and volunteers,” David Ingerslev, Project Manager at St Mungo’s and Rough Sleeping Partnership lead said

“The donation stations are helping bring new support to the original #SOSBristol fundraising campaign. It is vital we connect with people rough sleeping and offer them a safer life away from the streets. It is dangerous for anyone to be sleeping rough, dangerous to their physical and mental health.”

Anyone can make a street referral for rough sleepers in Bristol at: www.Streetlink.org.uk