A Welcome Home

One of the most distressing lettters that many of the people we support receive, comes from the Home

Office, to tell them that their support is going to be stopped on a given date, usually with around two weeks notice.  It will be cold, factual and blunt.  They will be told that they must vacate their accommodation on the prescribed date, and the meagre financial support thay have been receiving will also be stopped. How would you feel to be told that in the next two weeks you are going to be literally on the streets?  

For the people that come to our drop in, their situation is made worse because they will rarely have relatives in the UK that they can stay with, and if any of their asylum seeking friends were to take pity on them and offer them a safe place to sleep in their own accommodation they would be breaking the terms of their accommodation agreement which is checked regularly.  The vast majority of people have nowhere to to turn and no one to help them.

We at Sanctus believe that this is inhuman, and a symptom of a sickness at the heart of our society.  When the dignity of human beings can be stripped so readily, as a direct action of our government, we must do all that we can to counter that culture, and do our bit in finding safe places, offering shelter, hope and changing peoples lives for the better.

So, how can we do that?

Well we can speak up, we can sign petitions and we can lobby our MP's.  But we can also put actions to our words.  If we have a spare bedroom in our home, we can offer it to a 'guest'.  If you would like to find out more about being involved in this scheme please get in touch.

We at Sanctus have taken on the rental of a small property that can offer a welcome home to two families/couples or single people.  It is an ordinary house in an ordinary street.  As great as this is, we know it's not enough and would like to develop more properties.  Do you have a house that you can let us use in the Stoke on Trent/Staffordshire area?

Can you help us financially to pay towards the running costs of our property? If you can we would love to hear from you. I'd like to end with some challenging words spoken by Jesus himself: 

'I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to see me.'

Then those 'sheep' are going to say, Master, what are you talking about?

When did we ever see you hungry and feed you,

thirsty and give you a drink?

And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?

Then the King will say, "I'm telling you the solemn truth.  Whenever you did one of those things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me - you did it to me".

Matthew 25:v36-40 (The Message)