Eviction threat hangs over derelict GP surgery where homeless are holed up

Inside a derelict GP’s surgery in Greater Manchester, 15 homeless people have made a home.

Consulting rooms have been turned into bedrooms with salvaged beds and a kitchen with basic equipment.

The old waiting room is now a lounge with sofas, a TV and even a pool table, all donated by the local community.

When snow hit last week, the residents of the surgery were warm, safe and dry. Banners outside have renamed it the Saving People Homeless Project.

The building, close to Eccles town centre, had been empty for nine years, but its residents now face eviction during the coldest month of the year.

NHS Property Services says the premises are unsafe and the “building was broken into and occupied without our consent”.

An eviction notice served last Friday was only averted at the last minute when solicitors argued it would put the occupants’ lives at risk due to sub-zero temperatures.

“The building was just sitting here,” says resident Steven Agnew.

“Would the NHS rather have people in here taking care of the place, and themselves, or just freezing to death? If they get people out, we’ll be at the NHS’s door in one way or other.”

Fellow resident Stacie Martindale lost her home after fleeing domestic violence, including kidnap.

“I got into £2,000 of arrears even though I wasn’t living there,” she says. “Then the council said I’d made myself intentionally homeless. It was a choice between the street and a dangerous relationship.”

Her son is now living with his ­grandmother, but Stacie and her dog Kion had nowhere to go.

She needs two things to feel safe – Kion and a lock on her bedroom door. Neither are possible in most hostels, but at the GPs’ surgery, she has both.

Meanwhile, her room is full of the little touches that make a home – fairy lights above the donated sofa bed, side table and lamp, toiletries lined up on the window sill, an electric radiator, and a bed for Kion.

“This is not a squat, it’s a community,” says Stacie, a former pub worker and labourer, while giving us a tour of the surgery.

“I’ve been living in there for 10 weeks now and it’s made me feel human again. It’s better than living in a mixed dormitory.

“A lot of people arrived with nothing more than a carrier bag – their lives carried in their two hands.

“Now they’ve got their humanity again, a couple of changes of clothes, a bed, a few things taken out of a skip and a hot meal. There are wash basins in each room and there are toilets on each floor.

“We’re getting results. We had a young care leaver living with us and now he’s got his own flat. We took him down the housing and got him sorted.

"But people are very anxious about the eviction. Panic set in on Thursday night and people started losing hope. We’ve won a reprieve but we don’t know for how long.”

Manchester is currently running a ground-breaking Bed For Every Night scheme, but it ends on March 31.

Alec McFadden, from the nearby Salford Unemployed and Community Resource Centre, says residents hope the surgery could come to be included in the Manchester scheme, and that it could be continued beyond the end of March.

Matthew, 43, suffers from schizophrenia and has been homeless for 18 months, even sleeping under a trailer in the snow before coming to the surgery.

Above his bed, his spare clothes hang from a curtain rail. In the corner he has a microwave with a single potato and a bag of pasta.

“This is somewhere I actually feel safe,” he says.

Ashley Parker, 23, became homeless after struggling to pay rent on his agency job wages.

He then lost his employment because he didn’t have washing facilities, but is now able to shower at the surgery. “They’ve said I can reapply, so let’s see,” he says.

Another occupant, Dwayne, has a towel and spare jumper hanging from hooks in his room next to a neatly made double bed and TV.

“You can’t work if you can’t sleep and when you’re homeless you can’t get a good night’s sleep,” he says. “I’m thinking about work now that I’m not sleeping with one eye open any more.”

A spokesman for NHS Property Services said it asked residents to vacate in November and that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority homeless team “at the time confirmed that there is alternative accommodation immediately available for the occupants”.

They added: “Fire and Rescue Services have deemed this property unsafe for ­residential use in its current form, therefore, we were left with little option other than to instruct our legal team to proceed with seeking ­possession.”

The decision now lies in the hands of the courts and the NHS whether to work with residents or to evict vulnerable people onto the winter streets.

“I’m not speaking out to get help, I’m speaking out to get heard,” Stacie says.

“People have accused us of breaking into buildings, but really we’re saving people’s lives.”

Read More

Top news stories from Mirror Online

Source: Read Full Article