Residents in St Anne’s have said they would support turning a homeless shelter in their neighbourhood into affordable housing, but said there needed to be community facilities and a better bus network.
St Anne’s House in Brislington is currently used as a winter shelter and provides 30 emergency beds between October and March only.
Commissioned by Bristol City Council and run by St Mungo’s, the shelter is currently due to run until the end of March when its planning permission is set to expire.
Earlier this month the council revealed it was looking to convert the building into 28 one and two bedroom flats, all of which would be affordable.
But as any proposal for the building will need to go through the planning, legal and procurement process, it is unlikely there would be any work on site until spring 2021.
Therefore, an option to keep the building open as a year-round night shelter is also being considered.
Dozens of people attended a public meeting at St Anne’s Infant School this week to discuss the council’s plans and the future of the shelter.
Most of the people in attendance had only positive things to say about the shelter and the management team who have been running it.
One resident who lives just down the road from St Anne’s House said she would support the shelter being open for “as long as they wanted”.
She noted that there were concerns when the plans to open the shelter were first discussed two years ago - Bristol City Council received more than 130 objections to the scheme - but that it had worked really well.
Both St Mungo’s and the council made it clear at the meeting that St Anne’s House was always going to be “temporary” and that they were in discussions about opening a permanent shelter somewhere else in the city.
Paul Smith, cabinet member for housing at the council, said the long-term solution to getting more people off the streets and out of homelessness was building more affordable housing.
The meeting was told that Bristol had a chronic shortage of housing and that there are currently 13,000 people on the housing register and 500 families living in temporary accommodation.
Julian Higson, director of homes and landlord services at the council said that about 28 homes could be built on the site within the footprint of the current building, but that the council was also looking at the possibility of knocking down St Anne’s Hose and completely rebuilding.
He said it would depend on the type of homes most needed within the area.
Most of the residents at the meeting seemed to be in support of using the site for affordable housing, but said there had to be the amenities in place to support the community.
The majority of questions related to the lack of community facilities in the area and urged the council to consider including something within their plans for the St Anne’s House site.
There were also calls to improve the “really poor” bus links that service that area of the city.
Cllr Smith said that in his 50 years living in Bristol public transport had always been terrible, but that the council was working to improve things.
He added: “In terms of a community facility we want to hear what the community needs and if we had a group of local people who want to get together and tell us what that is we could look at building that into our plans.”
The council has said this is the very early stages of the plans and nothing has been decided yet.
