Emergency night shelter
Night shelter in Hackney providing 26 emergency bed spaces
Grant £15,000
Sleeping on the streets is not only cold and uncomfortable, but for people who end up doing it night after night, it can be dangerous and damaging.
Hackney Night Shelter offers 26 emergency bed spaces every night of the year, for people who would otherwise be sleeping rough. Their main shelter is based in a re-purposed former council building, where they have installed showers and turned the offices into bedrooms. They also run a smaller women’s shelter in a large house which they rent from a local church. Teams of volunteers serve hot breakfasts and evening meals to people staying there.
They focus on providing routes out of homelessness, so that when someone leaves the shelter it is to move on positively into their own longer-term accommodation. They initially offer a stay of 28 nights, but they typically extend this until their guests have somewhere secure to move on into.