These innovative pods, which Caritas bought with support from Northern Trust, are designed to provide safe, short-term emergency accommodation for islanders experiencing homelessness.
Caritas will now work to make them available at the earliest opportunity, ensuring they can be used by those in need as winter approaches.
‘We are expecting that some days there will be a line of people and other days nor so many, but last winter we were contacted by quite a few people and we know there are a lot of people sleeping rough,’ said Caritas chairman Graham Merfield.
People who need to use the emergency sleeping pods can do so by contacting Caritas directly or being referred by other charities, and can stay for up to seven nights at a time.
The pods have a small single bed and a chemical toilet. Each one has a small window and a door with a passcode, and they are powered by solar.
‘There are no utilities, they are stand-alone and have lighting, a USB charging port and a chemical toilet which is cleaned through a hatch,’ said Mr Merfield.
The two pods cost £20,000 and due to the support from Northern Trust, Caritas has sufficient funding that it can use to buy more if they are needed from the money raised from the Skipton Big Sleepout earlier this year.
The idea came from Caritas trustee the Rev. Daniel Foot, rector of St Martin’s.
‘I was at the sleepout at KGV trying to sleep in the cold and soaking wet and thought I would do a Facebook post, but I had nothing in my head, and I thought how hard it is to have any sense of normality without shelter,’ he said.
‘While I was on Facebook I saw these on an ad. I sent them to Graham and said “we need to get these”.’
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