Winter night shelter
Hinde Street is part of the Westminster churches’ winter night shelter for four months each year. Watch a video about it here.
Rev Val Reid writes:
Every Monday at around 6pm you find half a dozen people in the main hall wrestling with camp beds. They have a big advantage over last year’s inflatable mattresses: they don’t deflate at 2am leaving you on the hard hall floor. The big disadvantage is that putting each one up is the equivalent of a serious gym workout. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, a couple of volunteer chefs are making shepherd’s pie, lamb stew, lasagne, veggie bake, rhubarb crumble – all recipes full of warmth and comfort on a cold evening.
The West London Day Centre is one of our West London Mission circuit’s projects working with local homeless people. For several years the centre has referred 15 people who are street homeless to the winter night shelter run by Churches Together in Westminster. Each night a different local church hosts these guests. We do Mondays, on Tuesday the group are sleeping in the church at St James’ Piccadilly, on Wednesday they are in Notre Dame de France in Leicester Square, and so on… Each church offers a meal, a group of friendly volunteers, a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning.
Meanwhile, the day centre is working to ensure that these guests are registered for benefits, helped to find work, supported in looking for local affordable housing. This is often successful: for example, in the last week three of our guests have moved into permanent accommodation. Two of them moved into Big House in Camberwell, one of the WLM projects providing housing for people who have been street homeless. Sadly, this doesn’t always work out so well. Affordable housing is hard to come by, and there is a long waiting list in Westminster.
Running the winter night shelter is both good fun and hard work.
If you feel inspired to join our team, please e-mail Val.
Rev Val Reid writes:
Every Monday at around 6pm you find half a dozen people in the main hall wrestling with camp beds. They have a big advantage over last year’s inflatable mattresses: they don’t deflate at 2am leaving you on the hard hall floor. The big disadvantage is that putting each one up is the equivalent of a serious gym workout. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, a couple of volunteer chefs are making shepherd’s pie, lamb stew, lasagne, veggie bake, rhubarb crumble – all recipes full of warmth and comfort on a cold evening.
The West London Day Centre is one of our West London Mission circuit’s projects working with local homeless people. For several years the centre has referred 15 people who are street homeless to the winter night shelter run by Churches Together in Westminster. Each night a different local church hosts these guests. We do Mondays, on Tuesday the group are sleeping in the church at St James’ Piccadilly, on Wednesday they are in Notre Dame de France in Leicester Square, and so on… Each church offers a meal, a group of friendly volunteers, a bed for the night and breakfast in the morning.
Meanwhile, the day centre is working to ensure that these guests are registered for benefits, helped to find work, supported in looking for local affordable housing. This is often successful: for example, in the last week three of our guests have moved into permanent accommodation. Two of them moved into Big House in Camberwell, one of the WLM projects providing housing for people who have been street homeless. Sadly, this doesn’t always work out so well. Affordable housing is hard to come by, and there is a long waiting list in Westminster.
Running the winter night shelter is both good fun and hard work.
If you feel inspired to join our team, please e-mail Val.
