No plans for new town night shelter, council says

A council says it has no plans to set up a new permanent night shelter despite concerns about the number of people living in tents in its town centre.

Tents have been appearing in the car park for Reading's Broad Street Mall, off Portman Road, and in Broad Street.

Grace Gomez, head of Christian organisation The Way Ministry, said a night shelter was needed "to keep people safe at night - it's that simple".

Matt Yeo, lead councillor for housing at Reading Borough Council, said the authority already had 270 bed spaces available and was also moving rough sleepers into permanent homes.

The Way Ministry has organised a public meeting on 21 February at Fairview Community Centre to discuss the night shelter issue.

Ms Gomez said despite the appearance of more tents, it was a "tiny part of what's going on in Reading".

"There are many people who are living in tents who stay away from the town centre and who keep themselves hidden," she said.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg. It hasn't just popped up, this has just been ongoing."

Ms Gomez blamed a "breakdown in the system" for people being in tents instead of using council beds.

"There's a process that you have to go through - you need to be verified," she said.

"One gentleman was telling me he put his tent up, and then he was waiting to be verified, and then they took the tent away and said 'you can't put your tent here'.

"So it's like a vicious circle... it really is shocking.

"People are feeling suicidal, they're feeling desperate... it really is awful and it has to change."

A night shelter was previously run in the town from December 2023 to March 2024.

Ms Gomez said such a shelter would be "somewhere where people can go instantly, where you don't have to go and put a tent up on the street and wait out there in all weathers and expose yourself to God knows what".

"People need to have privacy and they need dignity and support at a difficult time in their life," she said.

"I'm not having people's backs turned on them."

But Mr Yeo said setting up a new shelter was "not what professionals would advise us to do".

"You couldn't have the level of privacy or the level of separation you need, and the level of support you need, because you would have, I don't know how many people, all together in one place," he said.

The councillor said the authority's Housing First policy provided 25 units to help people get "back into the normal housing process".

He said much of the council's efforts on homelessness were "unseen" because they were about "preventing this from happening in the first place".

A man called Kepha Otundo died in January from exposure to the cold while in a tent near the town centre.

Mr Yeo said Mr Otundo had been offered a bed.

Additional reporting by James Aldridge at the Local Democracy Reporting Service