Northampton homeless charity seeing increase in demand
It comes as charity Centrepoint say more than 2,000 young people in the East Midlands could face homelessness this winter.
A local homeless charity say they expect they could reach capacity this winter for the amount of people they can help .
It comes after figures released this week from a national charity suggest more than 2,000 young people in the East Midlands could face homelessness this winter.
The new data from charity Centrepoint out earlier this week warn 23,500 young people are at risk of homelessness in England. That amounts to one young person becoming homeless every four minutes.
It's something backed up by Damon Boughen who is Grants and Trust Manager at Northampton Hope Centre.
He says demand over the last 12 months alone and has grown incrementally:
"We've seen more people needing our services as times living costs have got higher, cost of housing is becoming increasingly high and there's not as much available as there has been. So even before the winter came in, we're experiencing around 20% demand on our services."
He says they may reach capacity in their day centre which supports 75 people a day, and he says many of those are suffering mental health issues:
"We're seeing a lot more people who maybe have some sort of housing, but are really struggling are coming through our our services to use the social supermarket for example, where they can access low cost food and we see somewhere between 5 and 600 people a month coming through that side as well."
The charity launched it's 'Save a Place for Hope' campaign at the start of this month.
Hope Staines is the Hope Centre's fundraising team leader and the events fundraising lead and explains the festive campaign:
"I think we all know that Christmas can be a very expensive time of year, from presents to turkeys to the dinner.
"So it's really just stopping and thinking how much do I spend at Christmas and can I donate that to make sure that none of our guests go hungry. So on Christmas Day service, we have Christmas dinner. So it's just asking our donors, could you donate the equivalent to a Christmas dinner just to make sure that we can feed everyone on Christmas Day.
Last year they served around 50 people on Christmas Day.