Tony Cooper discusses the impact of the closure of Phoenix House
The Bus Shelter Kent Community Hub has been helping those in desperate need in Swale for years but could soon be homeless itself after a decision was taken to close its base at Phoenix House. Here Tony Cooper, the charity's founder, discusses the impact.
Transcript
00:00 Phoenix House is a community hub where people can come in here, they can get a
00:07 breakfast, they can get a hot meal, they can get food parcels, they can get, they
00:13 can come in here and get clothing. We have a clothes bank. We also have a
00:19 community kitchen where people can come in and take fresh food off the table and
00:25 out the fridges. I'm hoping that KCC have a change of heart and work with us to
00:34 either purchase the building so that we can build a brand new building for the
00:40 community or they allow us to build, rebuild this, repair this one just to
00:50 keep it here just so that we can keep going. I don't know when this is going to
00:54 end where people are going to not need food parcels and not need a hot meal. I'd
00:59 hate to think it would be like not to have a meal when you're hungry.
01:05 As I said, within 15 minutes of us saying we were closed on Tuesday last week, we
01:16 had had reports of people going into the pie street and stealing from the shops.
01:23 That's got to stop and how that's got to stop is by continuing providing the
01:31 service that we do.