Raising Awareness of Homelessness in Leeds

What if we did the same thing in Leeds as they did in Paris? How quickly would people respond to 50+ tents being erected on Millenium Sq outside the City Hall or in front of the train station on City Sq? 

Making Homelessness Visible

Raising the profile of homelessness is very important to attract help and support for programmes aimed at ending rough sleeping. As many homeless people hide away, especially when sleeping rough, the scale of the problem is easy to underestimate. Groups like the Big Issue help to raise awareness by getting homeless people into view and creates a self help environment.

There have been many other groups and vents that have done there best to raise awareness about homelessness particularly rough sleeping. Perhaps one of the most successful of these events has been the Children of Don Quixote’s tent village along the banks of the Saint-Martin canal in northeast Paris. Which follwed Medicins Du Mondes ‘tent city’ campaign of 2005 (The Independent: 'Tent city' shames Paris into helping its homeless Aug 11 2006) which had handed out 300 tents to homeless people to pitch around Paris. The camp was established in response to police action to remove smaller camps from Paris.

Image from Flickr – Matthew J Oliver http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewoliver/331129080/

This Children of Don Quixote set up a community of 100 lightweight tents along the banks of the canal in December 2006 to highlight the problem of homelessness in Paris. The organisation then invited affluent Parisians to spend time or a night in the cold at the camp to experience what the homeless people go through. The event was so successful that many homeless people flocked to the camp and other non profit organisations provided 150 more tents. The group which became protestors refused to leave the camp until the government promised to do more to eradicate homelessness in France.

However not everyone was happy about the event especially those who were more sceptical about the government promises of increased aid which accompanied both the 2005 ‘tent city’ campaign and the Children of Don Quixote’s campaign, one homeless man living further up the canal said "When they go, you'll go(meaning the media), everyone will go — right back where they came from," he replied, throwing a stick on his fire. "Us, we'll still be here. We're always here." http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1573252,00.html

The group attmpted to repeat the event the following year setting up tents opposite Notre Dame but these were ‘torn down’ by police under orders from the new French president Nicolas Sarkozy before the protest could establish itself.  (The Independent: Paris police tear down tents for homeless Dec 17 2007).

Further info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Saint-Martin

Homelessness in Numbers…

Homelessness effects many thousands of people in the UK and while most of these people will have access to shelter every night either with friends or family, in a B&B or in a hostel some will end up on the streets exposed to the elements and vulnerable to assault and other crimes. The governments official figure of the number of rough sleepers on an average night is 464, however, outreach programmes and charities who work on the streets with homeless people believe this number to be a significant underestimate because of the difficulty of counting people who do not want to be found or who spend the night travelling around to avoid being disturbed (check out organisations such as Crisis, shelter and the Simon community for more info (or wait for my background studies report to be finished for more detailed info)).

Life on the Street's Ain't Easy

A video by the residents of York Arc Light, a centre for the homeless designed by Baumon Lyons - right click on the video and click show all to see the full width or tell me how to adjust it on the post.

A Place To Lay Your Head

Having thought about this further it seems that what transitional shelters (and emergency shelters before that) are doing is preventing those displaced people from being homeless. The shelters provide a roof and in longer term strategies a bed, somewhere to wash and somewhere to cook.

It is this thought about homelessness that has made me think that surely a transitional shelter for the UK would be just as suited to a homeless shelter on a day to day basis…

Modifications would be needed to change a transitional shelter into a permanent residence and this would have its own problems with regards to where it could be built and the effects it would have on local residents.

Common Theme: Need for Shelter

The common  theme of all emergency shelters and transitional shelters is that they provide shelter and in general a better level of comfort than the shelter people were housed in immediately after the disaster.

Following on from my last post considering the differing requirements of transitional shelters: – Is it that expectations are different depending on the location – because of the standard of living before hand? Particularly between rich countries & poor countries, for instance a basic cabin in rural Pakistan (eg.) following a massive earthquake would seem much more… (luxurious?) than the same basic cabin in the UK following a flood.

Is it the level of loss that the becomes the defining element for peoples requirements / expectations following a disaster? If you have lost everything in a tsunami or earthquake what would be your expectations / requirements for a shelter compared with someone whose house had been flooded and was now drying before they can return and were thus in temporary shelter.

Please note – I am not saying that one loss is greater than another – whatever the disaster ANY loss is awful and deeply personal and affects people differently…(can this also have an effect on peoples expectations / requirements?)

If we get right down to the basic level of the theme: a need for shelter is it a places climate that is the biggest defining element of the requirements of a transitional shelter – protection from cold weather, hot weather, rain, snow, large diurnal temperature swings..etc?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The Final Project...

OK, so here we go, the final project. My initials thoughts have been to look at disaster relief shelters, more specifically transitional shelters designed for short medium term occupation - post tent and emergency shelter - before final reconstruction.


Starting at a wide point of thinking about how to re-house communities following a flood (for example) something better than caravans in UK (again for example) a structure that would be more flexible particularly for big families.


I am also beginning to think about what happens to schools, doctors surgeries and post offices those kind of community buildings if they are affected.

http://www.tewkesbury.gov.uk/gloshomeseeker/media/images/h/j/Tewkesbury_Borough_Flooding_2007.JPG

...Flood as the Generator

York: Foss as the Initiator...

The Cultural Building

Here is the conclusion of the project - better late than never

The Building

The Location -The building is located on the corner of Briggate and Kirkgate, currently ZARA and H&M, currently lacking any street presence along Kirkgate The location is at the heart of Briggate giving the building a good public face as well as making it highly accessible allowing frontage to be recreated along Kirkgate as was historically the case

The Goals - The building aims to give people access to a greater range of cultural experiences from special interests to international subcultures. The builiding will reinvent an historic type grain on the site bringing a 21st century twist to the yards of the past. The building will provide a showcase for local film and music talent

The Function - The building will a be a new entertainment venue for Leeds catering for a wide variety of interests in music & film by housing an independent cinema a music performance space and new retail space for specialist shops linking in with the buildings other functions such as film memorabilia and independent music stores