Hunt still on to find homeless charity a home

It’s been one week since we broke the story about a homeless service in the city centre becoming homeless itself.

Since then, the newly formed Belfast Homless Service has seen a huge surge of support.

Unfortunately, they still don’t have a building to operate from.

The lease on its previous building expired after 5 year years, and it has struggled to find a new place to continue the work.

It was based in Amelia Street, in the heart of Belfast and therefore accessible to those most in need.

They need a new building now to carry out their work on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

It helped up to 60 service users on average each evening, who have this week been left with no support service.

Liz Rocks, founder, told us how difficult the past few days have been.

She said :” there’s not even a word in the dictoranry that could describe the look on the service users faces when those doors closed on Thursday. It was just heartbreaking, horrendous.

“Over the past five years we have built a close bond, both the users and the volunteers, and it just feels now that our family has been broken up. It’s so painful.”

But Liz also told us how they have received a wave of support since the story went on air.

She continued: “we’ve had some support since our story went out on Cool FM. We’ve had a young girl set up a just giving page and we’ve also had a few churches and organisations get in contact with us about some potential buildings. But as of date nothing has went through.”

Liz now has to go out onto the streets this week to make sure her service users are coping without the “safe haven”.

“We are going to go out onto the streets this week, just to catch up with our service users and see how they are getting on and if they need just some company or someone to talk to. We will be there.

“It horrendous, we shouldn’t be going out on the streets to them, it’s just not how it works”.

If you want to find out more or can help in any way, please contact Liz on 07885 28295.