Arc Light centre

THERE is a saying Arc Light director Jeremy Jones likes to quote: "If you treat a man like a dog, he will act like a dog."

What Arc Light is all about, he says, is treating people like people. "We want to work with people so that they feel normal, they don't feel stigmatised or vilified," he says.

Arc Light, Mr Jones says, acts as the entry-point into support and help for those who have dropped off the bottom rung of society.

It provides a place to stay, and can begin to arrange access to services including health care, drugs rehabilitation schemes, benefits, training - and even, ultimately, paid employment and proper housing.

Most of all, Mr Jones says, it aims to give back self-esteem.

Since the hostel opened in the Bullnose building in Leeman Road in 1999, more than 1,300 people have stayed there, for an average of 42 nights each.

However, the centre now faces two problems. Firstly, the Bullnose building was only ever a temporary home because once work begins to develop the York Central site, the building will be demolished. Secondly, the building isn't big enough to provide the service Arc Light wants to offer.

The charity's aim, Mr Jones says, isn't just to provide a place to stay in an emergency. It wants to work with the people who come through its doors, to help them get off drugs, stop offending, and bring their lives back under control.

By doing that, it helps its clients and society in general, Mr Jones says - helping reduce crime, drug problems and begging on the streets, for example.

The Bullnose building has dormitory accommodation for 38 people. There is a small office and a caf with a TV - and that is about it.

"We are really struggling," says Mr Jones. "There is just not enough space. It is totally inappropriate to have an intense, personal conversation with someone in a dormitory when somebody else is sitting on the next bed."

The charity has been allowed to use an empty building in Piccadilly to runs its Baseline project, where clients receive training in everything from how to budget and structure their lives to cooking a meal.

But to really help homeless people break away from life on the street, Arc Light needs to be able to lift them out of street culture, says Mr Jones.

Hence the need for a new centre. The Government has put forward £2.575 million so that Arc Light can find itself a new home - and for 18 months the search has been on for a suitable site.

Seven possible sites have been considered (see panel) - but all, bar one, have been rejected. When the Shipton Street site came up in January this year, Mr Jones says he "felt in his waters" that it was the place.

The proposals for what Mr Jones describes as an "urban village" on the site, with a main entrance on Newborough Street, include converting the listed building that fronts Shipton Street into a health clinic and workshops.

Behind that, within the walled school compound, would be a 'relaxation zone' with reception, caf and chill-out room. Inside the school compound, a new building would contain 34 single bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and loo, and staff bedrooms.

The existing nursery school building would be turned into a community recreational and training facility that would include a gym, training room and IT suite.

Mr Jones does not accept that the site is inappropriate because it is in a residential area. The aim is to enable Arc Light residents to integrate back into society, he says. "A residential area is where human beings live. If they Arc Light residents are not allowed to live in a residential area, what does that mean? They are not human beings?"

All the evidence from the Arc Light centre suggests that while the residents have many problems, they don't cause trouble in their own neighbourhood, he insists.

But would he want to live next door to such a centre himself?

"That's an impossible question to answer. If I were to say no, I might as well resign tomorrow. If I was to say yes, people would say, well he would say that. But I and my staff do live with them. There is someone living with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

City of York Council, which has been working with Arc Light to develop proposals for a new centre, insisted this week that there was no done deal on the move to Clifton. Any planning application would be dealt with on its merits, the council said.

Mr Jones admits that if the Shipton Street move does not go ahead, Arc Light could lose it's £2.5 million of Government funding. The money has to be spent by June 2007, the Evening Press understands - and that would not leave enough time to go back to the drawing board.

"Unless we're able to come to a conclusion about Shipton Street, one which is acceptable to the local community and to the city, there is a real possibility that the Government funding will be withdrawn," Mr Jones said.

There will be an open day at St Luke's Church Hall on August 16 between 4.30 and 8.30pm where people can learn more about Arc Light plans and ask questions

Mr Jones makes an eloquent plea for new Arc Light centre, but residents will still need some convincing...

RARELY has an issue provoked such an outcry in Clifton as the plans to move the Arc Light centre to the former Shipton Street School.

More than 2,000 people signed a petition protesting against the proposals, which have also prompted a deluge of letters to the Evening Press.

Many opponents acknowledge the valuable work done by the homeless charity, but insist a residential area is not the right place for the new centre.

"Arc Light's caring attitude is to be commended, but it must be tempered with reality," wrote Michael Dean of Burton Stone Lane.

"The reality is that many people feel intimidated and frightened by such places because of their association with crime, drug abuse and alcoholism... A quiet residential street is unsuitable."

Other residents have pointed to fears that a homeless hostel on the site would affect property prices - while still more say Clifton already has enough problems without adding to them.

At a meeting in Burton Stone Community Centre to set up a 'task force' to fight the plans, Vin Davis, of Grosvenor Terrace Residents' Association, said: "You do not put people who are already unstable into an unstable community. You do not put petrol on fire."

Barney Skrentney, chairman of the Grosvenor Terrace Residents' Association, added: "We are trying our best to get our community back on our feet and we have made some wonderful progress. We support the ideals of Arc Light, but we do not feel that they can bring them into such a fragile community." An anonymous leaflet distributed to homes in the area pulled no punches. "The Arc Light is a hostel/drop-in centre not just for the homeless but also for drug addicts, drunkards, ex-cons," it said. "The customers of the Arc Light Centre are regularly in court for violence, and being drunk and disorderly etc."

Jeremy Jones may make an eloquent case for the work Arc Light does - but it remains to be seen whether he can win over the people of Clifton and Bootham.

Case studies

John...

JOHN Mackay finds it hard to talk about his mum. He "loves her to bits," the 22-year-old says, but the relationship is just too painful.

"One day I can ring her and she will end up in tears, and I will be in tears, and we will be saying how much we love each other. Then another day I can ring her and she will be f-ing and blinding down the phone, saying 'we don't need you'."

He has no one to blame but himself, John accepts. Brought up with his little sister by his mum in Scunthorpe, he seemed, at the age of 15, to have it all. He had a clutch of GCSEs, did some DJ-ing and, best of all, was a talented footballer with a place on a YTS scheme with Scunthorpe United.

Then he blew it. He'd always been big for his age, which meant he tended to mix with older lads. Because of that he fell in with the wrong crowd. He started using drugs - cannabis, amphetamines, ecstasy - and lost his YTS place after he failed a cannabis test.

Soon he had started on heroin. Eventually, his mum asked him to leave home because he started pinching money off her to pay for drugs.

He slept on people's floors for a while then, at 17, became homeless, moving from town to town, shoplifting to pay for drugs and sleeping wherever he could at night: in deserted houses, in alleyways, in city centre doorways.

"I often used to look for a carpet shop, where they might have put carpets in a skip," he says. "You could make yourself comfy there."

That didn't reduce the shame or loneliness.

"I used to near enough cry myself to sleep," he says. "All these thoughts would be running through my mind, about all the things I'd had in the past - my football, how well I did at school, my sister."

In and out of jail, he was eventually referred to a bail hostel in York and has been here ever since. Now, thanks to the Arc Light centre, he believes he may at last have a second chance.

He dresses smartly and has done all he can to turn his corner of the dormitory he shares with three other men into a home. There are posters on the walls; a corner for hanging up clothes; a space for his books - he's half-way through the new Harry Potter.

With Arc Light's help, he has a methadone prescription, which has helped him cut down his heroin use. Arc Light also helped him get access to treatment for depression.

Thanks to YACRO - the York Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders - he was even able to do some cleaning work for City of York Council. Now on Job Seekers Allowance, he did some voluntary work gardening and tree-cutting with PACY.

He hopes, eventually, to get a proper job, and to live the kind of normal life most people take for granted.

He understands why the people of Clifton are worried. All he asks, he says, is to be given a chance.

"It feels like nobody cares," he says. "I know they want the best for their families, their community, their neighbourhood. But we're all human beings."

Jacko...

Jacko will be familiar to many York people as the limping beggar who used to sit outside Bettys playing the penny whistle.

His is a common-enough story - adoptive parents who split up; behavioural problems as a child; into care from the age of 16. Add to that a car crash as a teenager which left him in a coma and with a permanent disability.

After he left hospital, social services found him a flat in York. He let it be taken over by other people, and lost it.

He became a heroin addict, living on the street and begging to feed his habit.

Many will feel little sympathy: except that Jacko, too, is a human being.

Now, with the help of Arc Light, he desperately wants to try to sort himself out. He is on a methadone prescription. He has stopped begging and hopes, ultimately, to find a place he can call his own. He believes that this time, with Arc Light's help, he could make a go of having his own flat.

"If I had enough support, I wouldn't mess it up," he says. "I know how much there is to lose."

Updated: 11:22 Friday, August 05, 2005