Charities team up to kit-out emergency homelessness accommodation

A group of charities are helping to furnish accommodation and keep homeless people safe during the lockdown.

Furniture Plus, Castle Furniture, and Tayside Re-users, which forms part of the Community Resources Network Scotland (CRNS) consortium, helped more than 30 homeless people in Aberdeenshire.

The men and women are being moved from shared accommodation to individual properties by Aberdeenshire Council to stop the spread of the coronavirus but needed such items as white goods, tables, seating and beds.

The organisations sourced enough stock and fellow charity Stella’s Voice, based in Peterhead, made the 200-mile round-trip to collect and deliver.

Colin Bruce, general manager at Furniture Plus, which is based in Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline, told The Courier: “We have a long history of working to support people in need in the local area.

“We were pleased to be called on to help out our hard-working colleagues from Peterhead by providing them with essential furniture and white goods for over 30 homeless people in Aberdeenshire.

“Meanwhile, we are also pulling out all the stops to ensure we can continue to work with Fife Council to supply them with quality reuse items to provide the essentials for local households in crisis at the moment.”

The Community Resources Network Scotland consortium supplies quality reuse furniture to a number of local authorities.

Fife Council has needed more furniture from the consortium recently for those in crisis, while Dundee City Council sources furnishings elsewhere.

Silv Ingram, CEO at the Castle Furniture Project, based in Cupar, said: “At this difficult time for many people, we have been focusing on setting up and operating our Elder’s Crisis Contact help line, to ensure vulnerable older people have someone to talk to and give them advice and support.”

  • Read all of our articles relating to COVID-19 here.
Share icon
Share this article: