The Greenwich Winter Night Shelter is gearing up for its second Christmas – and this weekend, donations are being matched as part of The Big Give’s Christmas Challenge campaign, so if you give £5, the centre receives £10. But what goes on inside? DARRYL CHAMBERLAIN had a look around to find out why your contributions are so important.
“The most satisfying thing for me are the simple things,” says Angie, the Greenwich Homeless Project’s fundraiser. “Just being around for someone to say hello to.
“I’ve learnt to stop asking ‘how are you?’, but just to say, ‘lovely to see you’, because then there’s no pressure. Because you might be feeling crap. I want the clients to know I’m glad they’re here, and that I’m pleased to see them.”
It’s a busy day at the Greenwich Winter Night Shelter, tucked away at the foot of an unassuming council block on the Middle Park Estate in Eltham. A fresh food delivery has just arrived, while a couple of representatives from Primark have popped in to see how they can help.
When the shelter started, it used church halls across the borough on different nights each week. Viv, the Christmas co-ordinator, started helping out at St Thomas’ Church in Charlton. “I slept on the floor,” she says. People had to get up in the morning and clear off at eight o’clock.
“It felt lovely at the time. But to trudge around with a heavy bag every night is a pain. Then that closed down with Covid.”
During the pandemic, councils were told to find accommodation for all homeless people as part of the government’s Everybody In campaign. “Obviously not everyone was in,” Viv said. “We couldn’t operate – people who’ve got time to work in a homeless shelter are often retired, and there were a few more at risk than the homeless people. So I didn’t do that for a while. Then I saw they’d moved here.”
Since 2022, the shelter has been based off Middle Park Avenue after Greenwich Council allowed it to use an old early-years centre.
If you visit expecting a bare hall and smelly camp beds, think again. There are individual rooms for nine men and five women – each with the guest’s name on the door – a lounge, two kitchens and a garden with a food-growing area. “If you are an expert in gardening, you don’t lose that when you’re homeless,” Viv says. There is also a store of coats, clothes, underwear and shoes for guests.
Overnight volunteers can stay in cosy-looking rooms that double as meeting rooms during the day, so counsellors, GPs and mental health nurses can visit. “See, I made that cushion cover there,” says Mandy, the project’s operations lead, who has just made the bed up in one.
“Last year we opened for the first time at Christmas,” Viv says. “We used to send people to a bed and breakfast, which seemed harsh to me because you wake up on your own and all you’ve got is a kettle. Boiled noodles aren’t really going to fill you with Christmas spirit, are they?”
Christmas week takes three weeks to organise, but it has its rewards.
“One of the guests last year said it was the best Christmas he’d ever had,” Viv says. “Which I thought was incredible, bearing in mind that it was a shared Christmas with a load of strangers and we kept telling him off smoking in the toilets. I bought him a pair of slippers from Primark.”
Guests are often referred from Greenwich and neighbouring councils, as well as nearby services such as the 999 Club in Deptford, Bromley Homeless and Thames Reach. The Greenwich Homelessness Project also runs a day centre here four days a week – “you don’t need a referral, you can just turn up,” says Viv – and guests can come from there too.
Some will stay for a few weeks, others might stay until the winter shelter closes in March: most will find private rental accommodation, some older or younger people may go into supported homes.
While the guests aren’t here – and their rooms safely locked, and belongings in lockers – there is still lots going on. Angie says that when The Big Give campaign went live on Tuesday, she was in the basement defrosting a freezer.
“Working here is a bit like Clapham Junction,” she says.” So you’re in the middle of an email, but then someone wants to ask about towels or shower gel or the washing. You wear many hats, but that’s part of the buzz of the place, you know?”
But with many of the guests having had traumatic experiences, the shelter provides a place to recover and regroup.
“Although it’s very buzzy, a lot of the guests comment how restful it is here,” Angie says. “So although we have activities going on, it really does feel like you’re coming home and you can switch off. And you don’t have to worry about anything. You can just come in, switch off and get re-energised.”
All this works with a team of volunteers – and more are needed.
Mandy says: “Our volunteers were a fantastic bunch of people, they really are a reflection of the community.
“They’re diverse and all different ages and everything. I was retired for two years and I came back here, I just stumbled across the, the, the project and it’s just such a lovely place to be part of. It really is smashing. I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”
To donate to the Greenwich Homeless Project, visit The Big Give – your donations will be doubled until Monday as part of its Christmas Challenge, to a target of £20,000.
To find out more about volunteering at the night shelter or day centre, visit greenwichhomelessproject.org.uk
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