Walk from Oxford Road to the Northern Quarter, and the thing that strikes you about about Manchester city centre is not the impressive Victorian architecture, but the sheer number of people sleeping rough.

The city has very few provisions in place to help the homeless population. In fact, the Narrowgate emergency night shelter is the only one of its kind serving Manchester and Salford and only has a small number of beds.

In two seperate articles for the Guardian in the summer of 2013, I explored Manchester’s homeless problem.  I intend to look at this issue in more detail later in the year. For the time being, you can find the two articles in the links below.

Salford homeless shelter forced to close after funding ruling (published May 15th 2013)

Closure threat returns for only emergency homeless shelter in Manchester and Salford (published July 10th 2013)