Meet the Charity Helping the Homeless Population of Leeds
Homeless Street Angels are a multi-award winning charity who have just opened their long-awaited support centre in Leeds
Homeless Street Angels began after Shelley Joyce’s twin sister Becky went out to feed the homeless one Friday night, and loved it so much that she persuaded her sister to start going with her. ‘The first time I went out, I cried for two hours when I got home. Within a few weeks we realised that there were no resources on a Thursday night,’ says Shelley. ‘We decided to start feeding the guys on a Thursday. We spent about £50 a week getting toiletries and started doing shout-outs on social media for donations. It took off from there.’
That was eight years ago. Since then, they’ve been granted charity status and this month opened a support centre, their greatest achievement yet. The centre in Leeds is called Abi House, after Shelley and Becky’s younger sister who sadly passed away in 2017. ‘Just to deal with the grief, we threw everything we had into the charity. We’ve been saving for eight years to get this property. We’ve jumped out of planes, swum with sharks, done wing walks, zip lining. We even did our own Christmas single last year which got into the charts and raised us £15,000.
The support centre will have food parcels on a Wednesday afternoon, plus a room for furniture where people can store TVs and things like that. We’re also going to offer classes and workshops every Friday.’ The classes will be taught by a range of famous faces, including Hollyoaks’ Lee Otway, Masterchef: The Professionals runner-up Matt Healy, television journalist Christine Talbot and journalist and fitness fanatic Sophie Malin. This year, Rate My Takeaway’s Danny Malin has released a Christmas single to raise money for the charity.
Winter is the season that the charity see the most demand for their services, as well as witnessing the most heartbreaking situations. ‘The clients we deal with, you can see their temperament change; they get scared and frustrated. They’re so hungry and cold and you can see their emotions all over their faces, it’s heartbreaking,’ says Shelley. ‘A few years ago when we went out, there was a guy outside in a doorway during a blizzard. We said we’d pay for him to go into a hotel; we had hardly any funding left but we couldn’t just leave him there. He refused and said he couldn’t leave his post because he got too much money sat there, that’s all he had to keep him going.’
With the recent opening of their support centre, the charity are in vital need of financial help, but it’s equally important to them to change people’s negative attitude towards the homeless. ‘We do a lot of school talks to change the stereotypes of homeless people. Everyone’s got a story, everyone’s different – it’s not always down to addiction. A lot of the guys have mental health issues, no life skills, or no family. Especially during Covid, a lot of families broke down and we saw an influx of people on the streets.’
Shelley stresses that they also always welcome donations, of both supplies and money: ‘People can see on our Facebook page what we need on any given day. The food bank is self-regulated and we get a lot of donations from local supermarkets, but we’re always needing warm clothes like jogging bottoms, hoodies and trainers.
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‘On our website, we have something called a Guardian Angel,’ she explains. ‘People subscribe to us and even if it’s just one pound a month, that is really helpful, just to generate more income. The support centre has doubled our expenditure and we’ve spent every penny we’ve got on it so we are a bit worried for the future. We’re living each day on a wing and a prayer.’
Despite this uncertain future, Shelley is certain that they’ll be fundraising successfully in no time. ‘We’re twins. Becky’s the crazy one and I’m the sensible one. She always comes with these ideas and I say “nope were not doing that!”. I don’t know what she’s going to come up with next but I think once the opening is out of the way, then the ideas will start coming!’
