Our Ministry with those sleeping rough at St John’s Cathedral
Justice & Advocacy
“We realised that up until that point we had been letting homeless people sleep on our property — we had been doing things for them, but not really treating them as part of our community. By opening up our kitchen and inviting them to share our resources…made a significant difference, not just to them, but to us,” says The Rev’d Dr Ann Solari
For more than a decade we have been welcoming people, who are having to sleep rough, to stay overnight in parts of the Cathedral Precinct. Being in a place where they are allowed to be means that they are not continually woken up by police and security guards and being made to move on. This gives them more control over their lives and a better chance of a good night’s sleep. It has also given us the ability to work with them to make the program work for both the Cathedral staff and those sleeping here.
Initially we thought that all we needed to do was to let people sleep onsite in areas that were safe for them — for those using the Cathedral during the day and the two households living in the precinct. It quickly became obvious though that we were going to need to provide storage for bedding because if we didn’t, we were going to have an ongoing issue with bedding and personal property being stored under our verandas, in our gardens and anywhere else bags could be hidden. Letting people leave blankets on the chair room veranda worked for a while, but led to ongoing issues with there not being enough blankets to go around. The obvious solution was for us to collect blankets, sheets, pillows, mats and doonas and for us to keep them clean and store them during the day, putting them out at night to be used and washing them as needed. As a community we have been so good at collecting bedding that we now have a shed full of bedding — we never run out and we never need to worry about people walking off with blankets. In fact, we now provide bedding for those sleeping in the park over the road, as well as for those sleeping in our precinct.
Over the years we have talked with those sleeping onsite and increased what we collect to include toiletries and snack food, which we put out each night with the bedding. Our model seemed to be working well and the problems we did have with bad behaviour and litter became easy to manage.
Before COVID-19 arrived, we were welcoming 20 to 30 sleepers most nights. Once the “lockdowns” started those sleeping rough were housed in hostels, motels and hotels for free. It meant that we generally had very few people sleeping onsite. This, of course, changed as we started to live with COVID-19 rather than control it and the numbers returned to the previous level.
Just before Christmass 2022, we suddenly realised that nearly all the food vans that supply hot evening meals, to those who are unable to access a hot meal, were not coming out from before Christmass until after New Year, or even longer. Some were not coming out for several weeks due to a lack of volunteers. We quickly realised that if we didn’t provide food some of those who sleep at the Cathedral were not going to get an evening meal. The first night we made sandwiches, which was very popular but unsustainable — we just didn’t have enough time and energy to make sandwiches for 20 or more adults to replace an evening meal. After discussing the issues, we decided to open up the St Martin’s House kitchen and let the sleepers make their own sandwiches and snacks. We put the snacks we had on a trolley — beans, spaghetti, noodles, canned fish and muesli bars. We invited them to make hot drinks using our kettle, cups, and spoons; to make toast using our toaster, plates and knives; to heat up snacks in the microwave; and, to use our toilet. And, it worked. Over the next week we learnt how to make large batches of pasta and rice dishes that they could help themselves to. And we learnt that they loved Milo, home-made cakes and used a lot of milk!
Initially we had only planned to do this for a month until all the vans were back in circulation, but after about 10 days, we received a thank you card — thanking us for what we were doing — and one of them personally expressed how great it was to be treated as a “person”.
We realised that up until that point we had been letting homeless people sleep on our property — we had been doing things for them, but not really treating them as part of our community. By opening up our kitchen and inviting them to share our resources, help themselves to food they want, plate it up themselves, and use the amount of salt, pepper and sauce that they wanted, made a significant difference, not just to them, but to us.
In some ways it is still “us and them”, but we now talk as friends, we listen to each other and remember, and we ask each other how we are and get the truth. We have let these people into our lives, and it has made a difference to us all. They have become part of our community.
And it has made a difference to us all — we open the kitchen whenever we can, we work together to make the program work and behaviour in our small area of the city has improved. We now have tea, coffee and toast available in the Cathedral for everyone nearly every day. Life is better for all of us.
It has made me wonder how often do we look at what we are doing and think how we could make it better, and how often are we brave enough to try?
First published in The Eagle, the magazine of St John’s Cathedral. Download your copy today.
Jump to next article
