Homelessness

The Eira Schader Home for the Aged in Trench Town was run-down and facing closure in 2016 until the National Leadership Prayer Breakfast made it its beneficiary, giving about $550,000 for repairs that drew in other donors.

Wellington City Mission converted a former backpackers’ hostel on Tory Street into Te Pā Pori, an 83-room transitional housing facility with round-the-clock staff, backed by $15 million in government support over three years.

Kingdom Bank made the largest loan in its history, £1 million, to help Dundonald Church in Wimbledon complete a new 650-seat building that includes flats for private sale, with profits supporting homeless services.

After Hurricane Dorian left an estimated 76,000 Bahamians homeless, a Methodist mission camp in Eleuthera became a shelter and St Paul’s Methodist Church in Freeport served about 750 meals a day.

A fire in downtown Kingston destroyed the Missionaries of the Poor’s Good Shepherd Home, leaving at least 60 wards and more than two dozen tenement residents homeless, and prompting Father Richard Ho Lung to ask where they would live.

A board member said the Anglican-run Wortley Home for Girls was in financial crisis before its 2015 fire, unable to cover utilities, food and salaries, and that its bigger rebuilt home needs more staff to reach full capacity.

The Salvation Army’s William Chamberlin men’s hostel in downtown Kingston, sheltering about 35 people, appealed for help with its bathrooms and kitchen while renting about six rooms to shopkeepers to help pay its bills and wages.

The Sisters of Mercy announced they would stop housing boys at Kingston’s Alpha Boys’ Home by June 2014, citing severe behavioural problems, the high cost of care and funding said to be less than a quarter of what state homes received.