Since its official opening last month, the Homeless Shelter and Rescue Mission of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness has been receiving numerous requests about when it will start to take in homeless persons, so they can sleep there at night
Kemar Saffrey, President of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) however noted that whilst the Alliance, previously referred to as the Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society (BVHS) has restarted a number of its programme, that aspect of allowing the homeless in to bed down at night, will soon be coming on stream.
“Since the opening, we are busier than ever, because we now have started back our feeding programme, and a number of services here for the homeless. So a lot more so now than ever, is happening. Obviously, we have a much bigger facility, which means the responsibilities are much more, since the demand is more. We are getting a lot of persons calling as it relates to wanting to come and use the shelter at night, so that’s another high priority thing for us and we are just trying to get things ready, to be able to start that intake, for those people to sleep at night. So that is where we are at,” Saffrey explained.
“We have also reached out to all the partner agencies within the Alliance, to let them know we are looking at [fully] opening the shelter within the next couple of days, so they can start sending people to sleep within the shelter. We have gotten back some of our licences which we need to operate, so we are just getting ready to start the intake process,” he further remarked.
Saffrey said that ahead of the official launch in October and just after, homeless persons kept coming to the new location in Spry Street, The City ready to settle in and the BAEH is therefore eager to get them off the streets, even as the Christmas period approaches.
“This is obviously something that the organisation has been talking about for years and when persons finally heard it was up and coming, they tried to reach out to find out when it would be open. The other thing too, is that we found out that a lot of homeless persons turned up at the launch as well – so that was good. Now that we have finally finished that, the requests are there and we will start as soon as possible to take people in and allow them to rest themselves,” he reiterated.
The new homeless shelter will accommodate up to 90 persons, inclusive of a maximum of 20 women and ten children.