A London church has launched an attempt to protect homeless people as cold weather and snow threatens the UK this week.
Oasis Church Waterloo is calling on Londoners to help buy Oyster travel cards for rough sleepers who cannot access shelter so that they can at least keep warm on public transport overnight as the winter weather worsens.
Church minister Rev Steve Chalke – founder of the Oasis charity - asked his congregation last Sunday to donate the price of the coffees they would otherwise treat themselves to this week to buy Oyster cards for London's street sleepers. According to the church, this helps people get off the streets, out of the cold and onto a bus or a tube train in the warm.
As a result, more than £2,000 was raised in a few minutes and a host of volunteers pledged their time to give out the cards through this week.
However, with worsening weather warnings for the days ahead, it is feared that even this generosity will not be sufficient. Over the next few days snow, sleet and rain could all hit and the remainder of the winter is expected to be long and cold.
The charity is therefore calling on people to donate £20 to the emergency 'Warm Up' appeal.
The first £10 will go directly toward purchasing an Oyster card with adequate credit and the second, to help sustain the wider and longer-term response to homelessness and to support vulnerable people in communities.
Chalke said: 'We are not pretending that this is a solution to homelessness. But this is an emergency. We have to do something to get people off the streets and out of the cold. It is impossible to walk through central London without seeing endless people begging, sleeping under cardboard and trying to shelter from the biting cold wind and freezing rain as best they can. We all pass them. And, if you are anything like me, often with no cash in your pockets, you just don't know what to do.
'Whatever the rhetoric, in truth there are just not enough accessible beds for everyone who is out there in the cold. And, even if there were, some people have been so abandoned that they just can't fit into institutional life. So, I am calling on all those of us who are fortunate enough to enjoy a warm home, good food and dry clothes, to give just £20 – the cost of a few coffees – to make what is potential a life-saving difference for someone else.'
There are between 2,500 and 3,000 homeless people on London's streets. As temperatures fall this is not simply a serious threat to health but will also place increased strain on already overstretched Accident and Emergency Hospital departments across the city.
Oasis also works on more long-term responses to homelessness and poverty in communities across to country supporting people from crisis all the way to independent living.
For more about the Warm Up Appeal click here. For more about Oasis' wider response to the housing crisis, click here.
