Off the Streets is a grassroot group of local residents who wanted to do something about the number of rough sleepers in Southend. In 2018 Southend was the 8th highest town in the UK for the number of rough sleepers. Coastal towns have always attracted rough sleepers and Southend is no different.
We sent our graduate trainee, Mehak Gupta, to have a look around their new shelter in December 2024 with Del Thomas from the charity. Del very kindly provided us with the following information about the charity.
Off the Streets started in September 2018 and in the two years it was open helped 119 rough sleepers find permanent accommodation. The night shelter used to run from a shopfront, slept 5 people per night and the charity worked hard to educate each person in a bespoke way to help them ‘off the streets.` They work using a strength-based approach, pulling alongside rough sleepers – educating and helping them to achieve their goals. The average length of stay was 21 nights. In 2019, Off The Streets was awarded the Excellence Standard in the Housing Justice kitemark which is the highest possible to achieve. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the night shelter had to close
Off the Streets has recently secured the funding to buy a 7-bed seaside hotel which will become an enhanced night shelter for up to 9 people at any one time – each staying for an initial 28 days. they will accept couples and the ground floor bedroom has been adapted to enable its use by disabled people.
Our main objective is to get rough sleepers off the streets and into our night shelter. Once there, they stay for up to 28 days (as long as they are engaging with our processes and have no other place to go) and the main aim is to get them into permanent accommodation.
Former residents come from all walks of life, teachers, divorced parents, ex-offenders, ex-Armed Forces personnel, people who have lost income due to financial difficulties or job loss or the pandemic, those suffering mental illness, long term rough sleepers. Off The Streets gives them back a sense of dignity and belonging providing education/support to achieve their aims and overcome the challenges before them one step at a time.
Off the Streets also follows up to support the guests while they adapt to a permanent home, which for some can be very challenging. The new enhanced night shelter will support an estimated 176 rough sleepers every year to move from the streets into permanent accommodation. This includes couples (rarely catered for) and disabled homeless people (very rarely catered for).
We recently partnered with a local housing provider (HARP) to run a temporary shelter from December to March. We had 100 rough sleepers stay at different points throughout those months and housed 50 of them.
`Can you help me get a mortgage? ` This was a question we were asked a couple of weeks ago by an ex-guest who stayed with us 4 years ago. I first met him on the streets 13 years ago and 6 years ago he was in floods of tears saying he couldn’t imagine himself being housed as he was too used to being on the street. I was worried he would die on the street as he had a few bleeds on the brain and he was told by a doctor that if he bumped his head once more, he would likely die. He was a 6 ft2 man who was sleeping in a disabled toilet! He became one of our guests and as well as accommodation we helped him get a job. Over the past 4 years he has got promotion after promotion (he can speak 8 languages!) and is now in a position to get a mortgage.
The majority of our funding comes in from grants but we have an amazing group of people who donate between £5 and £100 monthly and these people are our absolute lifeline and we are always truly grateful to them.
The biggest challenge we have faced so far is the fact that the builders we used went into liquidation. This meant that extra time has sadly been added to the build time. This was a massive frustration for us and so we are partnering with a local church to open a temporary night shelter until the building works have finished.
We have a board of trustees which oversee a lot of the work. It is vey hands on at the moment but this will change once we open. We have 4 sub working groups from that board – Building, Fundraising, Operational Matters and Policy writing. We did also have a comms and marketing sub working group but trustees had too much to do and so this closed down. Leading the Operational sub working group is our Shelter Manager and although just trustees at the moment, will feature shift managers as well. We will have a shift manager every night and they will then have volunteers working alongside them. We will also have concierge services overnight.
Our charity has 2 paid employees- the shelter manager and charity development officer and around 45 volunteers.
In the next few years we hope that the shelter will once again thrive and be open. We also want to work a lot closer with other agencies and companies in order to promote opportunities for our guests. We are in the process of organising partnerships (and therefore training and employment opportunities) with a local rock climbing company, a medical company, a hotel and also a kitchen.