I'd already looked into this one several years ago and even had a full business proposal for it. Submitted it and it fell on stony ground as the ones concerned that needed to approve and support it are a bunch of tossers.
It was to take an old warehouse and renovate it, fit it out as a hostel type establishment, nothing fancy but clean and functional.
This was to be fitted out with 120 rooms (going by the original plans I drew up using the real estate to best utilisation), 2 games rooms, 1 tea room, 1 large dining room/kitchen, 5 private rooms with phone facilities, and a few more public type rooms and offices, etc.
Now the reason for this was to house and help homeless people get back on their feet by giving them not just a bed for the night but an actual (very small version) of a home environment, where they could clean up, have an address for starters, apply for jobs, get themselves on housing lists or look for somewhere more permanent. Basically have the basics to get their lives back together, a door with a lock on it feels much better at night when you’re sleeping than a back alley. Decent food and your own toilet and shower give a little self respect back too. And they all help in one way or another to maintain the place, be it using a trade they have or washing dishes in the dining room, means they’re involved not just dossing.
Sound like a pipe dream for a do-gooder? Read on for the financial bit.
It would have kept 20-25 staff on a decent wage (not this minimum crap) permanently. With the opportunity as jobs arose for those being taken in to possibly have a position there.
Their own benefits and local and national social work budget would have paid it easily with a 30% reduction in actual expenditure on doing the job better than the existing poor efforts.
With the expected turnaround on an annual basis it would have, allowed around 1,000 people to get back to having a life that didn’t involve begging / alcoholism brought on by circumstance / assaults and worse, plus the hospital and prison service care costs would have dropped proportionately.
The long term plan was for it to become a base that could be used by other areas too to bring people that wanted to get back on their feet, so location didn’t have to be a problem as it is meant as transitional, one coach run per month or even week or couple of days is hardly a high price for a facility.
So it was a dream of mine to earn a living and be helping not just the individual but in general.
Why would I think of such a thing? Many many years ago now I myself was in a position that I could do nothing to avoid and ended up being one of those scruffy sleeping under newspapers and cardboard homeless. You don’t half get your eyes opened. But being the stubborn little git I am I got out of it and it was no easy task, when you’re down you become invisible. So giving the chance to those who wanted to get out visibility isn’t too much to ask of anyone is it
And what Jordan said in the second bit
