Inside the sanctuary for homeless people: Abi House Hospice In Leeds by Homeless Street Angels

Yorkshire Post

Homeless Street Angel's Becky and Shelley Joyce show us inside their new one-stop shop for people in Leeds.

Transcript

00:00I'm Becky Joyce and this is Shelley Joyce, my twin sister, and together we run Homeless Streets Angels.

00:06So we've been fundraising for eight years now to get funds for our support centre, Abbey House,

00:13which we just got the keys for three weeks ago and it's been non-stop.

00:17So let's take you on a quick tour. It is a building site at the moment but we'll show you what the vision is.

00:22So in this room, this is going to be our office and our reception area where the guys can use computers,

00:29they can do applications and anything that's needed and all the office work.

00:37So through here, this will be our bigger food bank than we've had previously.

00:42We've just hit over 700 families on our food bank register so we needed more space.

00:48So this is going to be amazing, we'll be able to take more donations.

00:52It's almost set up so we will be sort of doing a soft opening next week for any of our clients who are in desperate need

00:59but the official opening date of the support centre is the 29th of November.

01:03And if you have a quick look to the right, this is where we're going to keep storing furniture for when we rehouse the guys

01:10so we can take furniture straight into their properties.

01:13So we'll just take you upstairs quickly, we've got amazing things that are going to be going on up here.

01:18We're going to be doing creative writing classes, we've got Christopher Aykroyd helping with that, he's a massive journalist.

01:25We've got Matt Healy, a celebrity chef who's going to be doing cooking classes.

01:31If you just have a look to the right, we're getting the bathroom done, looking stunning.

01:40We're going to be doing art classes, we're going to be doing therapy sessions,

01:44we've got chiropractors, opticians, hairdressers coming in.

01:48Anything to better the lives of our vulnerable guys, we're going to do it.

01:54So here we're going to have the commercial kitchen.

01:57For the past eight years, myself and Becky have been cooking from our homes

02:01so it will be nice to get our homes back finally.

02:04And we're going to have a fantastic kitchen set up where our volunteers can come in and help us cook on a Thursday night.

02:11Huge thanks to Matt Healy and Holly Healy for providing and fixing our commercial kitchen.

02:18In here is our fundraising room where we keep everything for our events

02:22and also we're going to store all the things for outreach such as all the sleeping bags, all the clothes and such like.

02:30So two more rooms left to go.

02:36And this is where all the action will happen.

02:40This is going to be the boardroom and this is where we're going to run all our classes for the guys.

02:47Art classes, creative writing, grease.

02:49I think Sophie Malin has even offered to do belly dancing classes

02:53which is going to be such a laugh with the guys, they're going to love it.

02:56Can't wait for that.

02:57So we've been really lucky so far, we've had Overbury who have been amazing,

03:01they've donated the carpets and paid for them to be fitted.

03:04We've had Pinnacle who are donating towards the signage outside

03:07which we're getting done in the next couple of weeks.

03:10We've had Rail Home coming this morning who are going to do all our CCTV.

03:14We've had Plusnet who sent a team of volunteers down to help paint the whole building.

03:19I mean it's literally been a case of DIY SOS.

03:22The lovely ladies from Female Decorators have been here all week painting as well.

03:26We've even had a service user come in and paint a couple of them.

03:29Every single day, yeah.

03:31I mean it's just been so emotional how the community's got involved

03:34and we wouldn't have been able to do it on our own.

03:36I mean literally we've been working non-stop for the last three weeks haven't we?

03:40Yeah.

03:41Literally we're covered in bruises, we're absolutely exhausted

03:43but we're hoping to get it open very soon.

03:45And our last final room is our private room, our therapy room for vulnerable clients

03:50and also where we can bring in housing options,

03:53we can bring in forward leads for drugs advice,

03:56all one-to-one sessions in here which is more personal

04:00and hopefully this is going to be perfect when it's finished

04:04and this is the dream.

04:06Welcome to our new house.

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