Pray for 17 People Awaiting Re-Housing Following Promised Eviction from BHT's Olympus House

Facing eviction and an uncertain future in Brighton

Pray for this couple and for the 17 men and women awaiting to be re-housed following the promised January 2014 closure and re-opening of Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) owned Olympus House.

You can read about the story of Brighton's news 'Sea-Containers' and Olympus House's closure and re-opening to become a 'half-way house' for those leaving mental health institutions in the region here at The Eye of a Needle.

I have a video interview of a couple who live in Olympus House who are yet to be housed explaining their situation and the situation of the premises. There remain, as I say, 17 other people who have no idea where they will live after Christmas.

Olympus House

Long term readers will know the couple. Say a prayer for them. They still do not know to where they will be re-located in January. They were not 'fortunate' enough to be housed in a shipping container. They were perhaps considered 'unsuitable' for reasons known only to the local authority and/or BHT. This couple and presumably the rest have been told that there are no more shipping containers available and that they are 'full up'. This particular couple have been told by the local authority that they are no longer in a position to show a 'duty of care' for them. They fear a move back to Percival Terrace or 17-19 Grand Parade or some other privately owned dump in Brighton that makes piles of cash off the backs of the homeless.

Nice shantytown! Shipping containers for the homeless...

Perhaps BHT have a property somewhere in Brighton where this couple could be accommodated. Given that they, along with so many vulnerable homeless people, are being evicted through no personal fault of their own, BHT could make an extra special effort for them since the Council seem to think they have no duty to house them. After all, one of them is suffering mental health conditions, has her own mental health worker and suffers from the bi-polar condition and receives substantial care from her companion.

May God provide to this couple, well known to long term readers, decent, safe, dignified accommodation, may justice be done in their regard and may BHT be both transparent with the general public and merciful to those in their care, who are powerless in the face of BHT's decisions and so often without an advocate. To be without an advocate seems so strange when BHT have a team of lawyers.

BHT's 6 month licence, £165 per week shipping container accommodation for the homeless is to open to the press on Monday. I hope to get along to supply the press with what should be for them some much needed information which has not been forthcoming from BHT's press office so say a prayer for me too.

It is amazing what Brighton will do for the student population of Brighton in London Road, when contrasted with what Brighton will do for the homeless population. Here's what is being built for the students. What a contrast!

Student accommodation being built on London Road

Homeless accommodation off the London Road

I guess that for all of Brighton's left-wing pretensions, the raw power of 'unfettered consumerism' and the temptations posed by liberal neo-con economics are just too much to resist after all. They say your home says much about you. In Brighton, for many, it says much about what people think you are worth. Yet the poor are worth everything to Jesus! All of us, cost Him nothing less than everything and as the Holy Father so rightly says, He has a special love for them!