Call for 24-hour facility for the homeless

The government of Barbados is being called upon to assist in providing a property that will serve as a 24-hour shelter for persons who are homeless.

The call has come from President of the Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society (BVHS), Kemar Saffrey, who charges that the current Democratic Labour Party administration needs to look at the issue of homelessness in a more serious way going forward into 2018, as it is an issue of national importance.

“For next year, obviously we would like the support. We would like government to look into this more seriously and to see this as something that could turn out to be a national crisis, with our country having so many homeless persons,” Saffrey commented.

Pointing out that more and more persons are turning to the streets as they lose their jobs and are unable to pay their rent, fall out with relatives or even lose their homes to fire, Saffrey stated that the longer persons remain on the streets, the greater the dangers, especially for women and children, and the greater the likelihood of a link to vagrancy.

“So we are urging government in whatever way they can, to secure a property, even if it is a property that can only be temporarily used, and if they don’t want to include us, we don’t mind, but they need to find something that we can run a 24-hour shelter from, so that when a man or woman comes on the street, there is somewhere for them to go. That is our appeal to government for next year. That is our focus,” Saffrey maintained.

The BVHS president meanwhile noted that the Society will be pushing a more visible campaign against homelessness in 2018, in a bid to remove more of the homeless, off of the streets.

“We will have a campaign for next year called “Homeless No More”. We will be pushing that next year, hashtag (#) Homeless No More, where we will be looking to focus on removing as many homeless persons off the streets or all homeless people off the streets, but it can’t be accomplished unless we have these shelters,” he stated.

“So we are making a plea for anybody who has got a house that we can use, that we can rent from you or you can give it to us for our purpose,” he added.

He finally stated, “There are a number of things we would like to do next year, so people will hear more about the homeless through our campaigns, because we need to (continue the fight against) homelessness”. (RSM)