News / homelessness
Keeping Bristol warm as temperatures plummet
Within minutes of a group of volunteers setting out from the Cascade Steps on Sunday evening, dozens of hats, gloves and scarves had been tied around lampposts and bollards.
On the corner of Baldwin Street and Broad Quay, a woman who gave her name as Shortie was sitting on a sofa with her friend Sean in the doorway of Santander bank as the volunteers passed by.
Shortie has been homeless in Bristol for seven months. Her boyfriend recently died in an NCP car park and she says that because she is from the traveller community, she cannot prove that she has any family links to Bristol meaning that the council is unable to support her.
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“If it was not for volunteers like this, the Government would let their own people die on the streets,” said Shortie. “I’m 44. Brought up three children. I have not always been like this.”
Shortie has been homeless in Bristol for seven months
As the hats, gloves and scarves were left to be picked up by Shortie and others like her who need it most, the volunteers split into two cohorts to continue up both Corn Street and Baldwin Street, before heading together through Castle Park and back to the centre through Broadmead and Nelson Street.
“It’s really cold out tonight and that brings it home to a lot of people how bad the situation out here is,” said Matt Goulette of Keep Bristol Warm, organisers of this annual ‘I Am Not Lost’ event – named after the handwritten tags left on the clothes.
Not all of the items tied up by volunteers will have been collected by Monday morning – something which Matt hopes will be symbolic and prompt people to ask questions about where they have come from at the start of Homelessness Awareness Week.
Keep Bristol Warm volunteers with some of the donated hat, gloves and scarves
Volunteers came from across Bristol on Sunday with suitcases, trolleys, black sacks and even prams filled with warm clothes.
One of the youngest volunteers was eight-year-old Molly Webster from Bishopston, there with her mum Emma, a teacher. Before setting off from the meeting point on the centre, Molly said that she was here “so we can make sure that all of Bristol is warm”.
A scarf tied around a lamppost on Baldwin Street
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