Run-down blight on landscape

Sep 11 2009 by Our Correspondent, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

Dear Editor, – Why does your newspaper continue to refer to the Waverley Hotel as a “flagship” homeless shelter (Page 3, PA Tuesday, September 8) ?

It is a B&B at the end of its life which happens to be used by the council to house homeless people when there is no other choice. A true homeless shelter is somewhere like CATH or Anchor House or Greyfriars, offering simple, but well-managed accommodation, with 24-hour staffing and support from social workers and trained alcohol and drug counsellors, helping people to overcome the issues which made them become homeless in the first place.

The council admits itself that B&B is the worst type of accommodation they can offer homeless people; in fact they’re breaching temporary accommodation orders if they put families into B&B too long.

They’ve opened a new family homeless shelter and are transferring unpopular bedsit flats in St Catherine’s Square into temporary accommodation because they are so determined not to use places like the Waverley.

Doesn’t that tell you something? Far from being a “flagship” homeless shelter the Waverley is a run-down blight on the Perth townscape which has suffered from a drastic lack of investment by the owners, and is so bad that even people with nowhere else to turn don’t want to be place there. For goodness sake since the refurbishment a couple of years ago Greyfriars Hostel is a more pleasant place to stay if you’re homeless than the Waverley is!

The closure of the Waverley Hotel will be a sad day, but only in the sense that the closure of any city centre business is. With proper investment and a refurbishment it could still be the pleasant family hotel it used to be.

The closure won’t mean any kind of loss for homeless people in Perth and Kinross; they will continue to be found places to stay (and hopefully in better circumstances than a B&B) with support from experienced Council and voluntary sector staff.

Bridget McGregor,

By email.