Sheffield rough sleepers living in tents want more done to tackle homelessness
With winter drawing in, homelessness in Sheffield isn't been taken seriously enough - that's the message from a group of rough sleepers who've set up tents in the city to highlight the issue.
A group of rough sleepers in Sheffield, who've set up tents to highlight homelessness, want people to pay more attention to the issue in the city.
The so-called Sheffield Tent City's been set up outside the old Park Hill flats to provide them with a safe place to sleep as winter draws in but it's also to highlight the scale of the homelessness in the city.
Anthony's Cunningham's behind the idea - he says people don't take homelessness seriously enough:
"I am going to make sure these guys get some kind of flat, a house, shared accommodation so they're off the street for the winter because come about 6 o'clock, it's freezing. For people who are out there that say people are earning so much money begging - I'd invite people to go out sit down at Fargate for an hour - do they think it's that easy?
"There are situations where people have been urinated on, had food thrown at them, daily abuse and there's also the mental health issue of people on the street. It's a growing problem that everyone wants to ignore.
"Some of the stories are horrendous - I know one guy who's been stabbed up like seven times just for getting his head down. For what? Literally for what? The police are out there looking after people but then you've got a few bad eggs who are booting people along, and they're only trying to sleep."
The tents have been set up after a similar group in Leeds were moved on by the council after they pitched tents in the city centre to protest about how rough sleepers are treated.
The group behind that project have been helping Sheffield's tent city get off the ground.
Anthony says it's an issue that people need to pay attention to:
"It gets highlighted but it gets ignored. A lot of people will turn round and just be like, go and get a job, go and sort yourselves out. It's not as easy as that - there are so many complications to being homeless. People just don't care."
Sheffield City Council say they've been working with the group to help them get housing - and are doing all they can to tackle homelessness in the city.
Jayne Dunn's the Cabinet Member for Housing:
"I know that my teams have been out there regularly to see them - there are six homeless people that we know about who we've been working with, and not just the council, with the Archer Project, the Turning Point and Police - we've all been working really closely with them.
"We have 11 rough sleepers in Sheffield and we know about them and work really closely with them. We've got a really good team that go out there but Sheffield is actually one of the top cities at preventing homelessness and dealing with it.
"I was informed today that every single person there bar one we actually knew about and we've been working with. There's a very small cohort that do not want to live within a home and we work really hard with them - and it can take quite a while. The archer Project and Turning Point do some amazing work but it doesn't happen overnight."