London LGBTQ Homeless Shelter has been given a permement home, complete with community centre, in a disused Fire Station in Shoreditch. The Mayor Sadiq Khan pitched is some £50,000 to convert the 100 year old building which had been closed since 2014, and which made it possible LGBTQ homelessness charity The Outside Project to proceed with their plans.
It will initially have the capacity to house 10 people and although there are no age limits , it is accepted that up to 1 in 4 young people experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTQ. These are the people that usually fall through the cracks of mainstream agencies, so the new shelter has been desperately needed for sometime.
The ground floor of the former fire engine garage on the ground floor will become a community space for workshops and outreach programmes.
When he recently visited shelter the Mayor remarked “What’s remarkable is we’re in 2019 and this is the UK’s first ever LGBTIQ+ homelessness shelter,”
For more information about The Outside Project and the new LGBTQ homeless shelter and community centre go to http://lgbtiqoutside.org/the-project/
