Week Five

To begin the week I starting looking at the high levels of homelessness in London, I discovered that 6437 people sleep rough every night in London this is a 62% rise in the past two years, 52% of these people are not UK Nationals and 9% were over 55, and less than 1% were under 18 years old. This lead me to deiced to turn my tunnel in to a homeless shelter.
I then went back and re visited my site so that I could work out scale and understand the space a bit more, I also wanted to look at the buildings and materials on top of my tunnel so I could try and devise a way of getting natural light in. Initially I though I was going to use 965 meters of the tunnel but once seeing it I realised this is still too much of the tunnel to use.
I then began to look at the support in and around Holborn and London Bridge for homeless people. I noticed that the homeless organisation all offer very different things some a purely a place to stay some are only places to get food or support also there are various different centres for people to use.

This lead me to look at activities and programmes such as 'Gordon behind bars' where Gordon Ramsey taught burglars, thieves and ex drug deals how to cook. I also investigated an organisation called the Clink which is an organisation that employs purely ex offenders for there restaurant and food catering company. This charity gives people time to get used to full time employment and start being an active member of society. It is based in Brixton very close to where I live.

Therefore I deiced to create a scheme that rehabilitated homeless people by giving them support and then teaching them at trade.

Step one - Homeless people come to the shelter and are taken of the streets
Step two - Given shelter, food and support in the form of concealing if required
Step three- Taught a particular trade to become a chef or a server
Step four - Work on the on sight restaurant
Step five - Supported to find a full time job and some where to live