Busiest year for Teesside homelessness support charity
Cornerstone in Hartlepool provides a number of services
Last updated 1st May 2025
A homelessness support charity in Teesside says this year has been the busiest for them.
Cornerstone in Hartlepool provides a number of services and tries to get rough sleepers and those who are homeless into accommodation.
Aidan Gardner is a homeless response support worker there - he has been supported by the charity himself and said: "I was a drug addict and it came to the point where my life blew apart. I ended up going to prison and when I came out, I went back to drugs and I ended up homeless for six weeks and that's when I came into contact with Cornerstone.
"My life has just... I can't even explain what it's like for me at the moment. It's just a totally different life from what I had two-three years ago. To be fair, I thought my life was done really because I had been an addict for 27 years. My life had been in turmoil for years because of drugs, so I've turned it around.
"I was homeless myself and an addict and a lot of the people who we actually deal with are actually in that type of life as well, so I can speak from experience and help them. I always say I know how they're feeling, what they're thinking and stuff like that, so I can just put my experience back to them and help them.
"There's a bit of a stigma around addiction like 'you'll never change' and don't get me wrong, I had that same opinion myself. I got to the point where I was like 'do you know what? This is me. This is my life here.' But I wanted to do something for myself, I wanted to change my life' and I've got the perfect opportunity here. I've done nothing but grow and that's just amazing for me."
Harry Morton is the homeless response lead and said: "We do the outreach for Hartlepool Borough Council and that involves going around on the streets and trying to engage with people who are rough sleeping, and then we've got our hub service as well, where anyone who's rough sleeping can come in Monday to Friday 10am to 3pm, get a hot shower, get some food and a hot drink. We can try and support them with anything housing related.
"We have two drop-ins a week and one of them is on a Monday 12pm until 2pm, which is open to the community as well as our drop-in on a Thursday evening as well which is on from 8pm to 10pm, where people can come in to get a hot drink, hot food and any support they might need.
"It's important because the people who are rough sleeping, it gives them a little bit of time off the streets. We've also got access to temporary accommodation which we provide, so there's been a lot of cases in the last 12 months where we've been able to verify someone as rough sleeping and get them straight into our temporary accommodation and support them from there.
"As it gets colder, finding accommodation gets harder just because all of the temporary accommodation fills up. You get more people approaching the council to apply as homeless, so it's difficult but luckily we're always looking to take on more properties to be used as temporary or even longer-term, with the idea being we can identify people on the streets and put them straight into a property."