Former Celtic striker and manager, Lou Macari, has been involved with helping the homeless for some time. He opened a shelter last year, which housed 46 people but had to close during the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Undeterred, the ex-Scotland international has responded to the situation by installing new glamping style pods.
Renting a warehouse the size of a football pitch, Macari has added the temporary homes which include TVs, heated water and kettles. What’s more, the pods have numbered doors which is a forward thinking idea to provide residents with a permanent address. Thanks to that status, the homeless individuals can now lift themselves out of poverty by being able to apply for jobs.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Lou said that the new facilities had given people more dignity and that residents were now taking “great pride” in their pods.
Macari continued by telling the radio channel: “I saw them in a field and I stumbled onto them and I thought ‘will these work in a warehouse?’ and I thought ‘well there’s no reason why they wouldn’t’.
“They’ve got a heater in the pod, they’ve obviously got beds. But the biggest thing that’s been the biggest help to us is that I rang the League Managers Association of which I’m a member… and I asked if we could get some televisions. I asked for 46 televisions and about a week later I got 46 televisions.”
The impact of those changes have been remarkable. Not only are people able to feel more human in these conditions, but they now have entertainment, news and talking points to discuss with one another. Macari explains: “They’ve talking points, they’ve things to do and say to each other. They’ve gone from being untidy people, because the place we were in before was very crammed, to showing a great deal of pride.
“There’s people I know who were probably the most untidy that I’ve ever seen and now all of a sudden I walk into the pod and, because there’s a number outside of the pod they’re taking a great deal of pride in it because they can now go to the job centre and when they are asked what their address is they’d say ‘number four Regent Road, Unit Four Regent Road and I live at number five.'”
