When did you join Emmaus Bristol?
I officially joined Emmaus Bristol in December 2024, but I had been working here since May through a driving agency. When I was offered shifts at Emmaus and looked into the charity, I immediately wanted every shift I could get. I have a bit of a background with homelessness in my family, so it felt really fitting.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I’m from a big family, one of 13 siblings. My dad used to run a removals and scrap metal business, but that unfortunately went under and we ended up losing the council house and were listed as intentionally homeless. Social services looked to put us into housing but couldn’t find a house big enough. For a while, there were 14 of us living in my grandad’s three-bedroom house. It was mental, the bulk of us were in the front room, and you had to crawl over everybody sleeping everywhere.
To save space, I was put into a hostel for about a year and then my family were split into two flats in Luton, in what we used to joke was the council’s dumping ground for unhouseable families. It was just full of families who were basically outside of the bracket to be dealt with on a normal basis. We were there for over a year before finding a private rental in Essex. I had moved out of the hostel and been working for a while by that point, and we scraped together the deposit money and moved in. I then decided to come and study BSc Digital Media at UWE, and that’s our story.
When I started at Emmaus Bristol and saw Shaftesbury House, I was taken back by the quality of living. The hostel I stayed in was unfortunately not as nice, although I was grateful for a roof and a bed. The accommodation at Emmaus is completely different. I’m very “pro the cause”.
Had you heard of Emmaus before working here?
Never. Since working here, I’ve had a look and there are no Emmaus communities near where we lived in either Luton or Stevenage. Something like that would be an invaluable resource, homelessness spans the UK and in my experience there just isn’t sufficient infrastructure to work on this problem.
We did get help from Shelter and some other non-profits, and we also had help with beds and white goods – very similar to Emmaus Bristol’s ongoing solidarity work. But there wasn’t anything quite Emmaus’s offerings.
How do you think Emmaus compares to hostels?
Oh, it’s completely different, 100%. The general wellbeing of people at Emmaus is better. You could tell that the people in the hostel were always, really at wits end. People at Emmaus, they laugh and joke. Sometimes, they’re upset and whatnot, but from my own observations the quality of life of the companions is much better. People in the hostel were very individualistic in their thinking; they didn’t really work with each other or want to spend much time with each other. Serious mental health and addiction issues were rife and unaddressed.
The hostel I was in was a subsidised, charity funded hostel. As a resident, you would be claiming housing benefit, and your regular benefits, and just get left with very little to do. As residents we were under a curfew, you would be provided a counselling session every week but that was almost the limit of the support available. Meals were cooked for you, but the food quality, no disrespect intended as it is absolutely better than nothing… But it was what I would believe prison food to be like. Emmaus companions share responsibilities for cooking and the ordering of food, and through my own story I can tell you, food is a source of self-care, and cooking for others provides self-worth and this is something that I’ve personally found an invaluable tool in maintaining good mental-health.
From your experience, what do you wish people knew about homelessness?
That it’s so much more complicated than what society thinks it is. My experience of the public opinion is that people seem to think that homelessness is some kind of choice. In my experience, there wasn’t really a choice at all, we had a running business that was supporting a big family, to then relying on a benefits system that just isn’t designed to have any support structure for that. When things start falling, they collapse all at once. It’s the domino effect essentially.
There does need to be more awareness around how people can end up homeless. But equally, I met many types of people in the hostel, and some had become very addicted to that kind of lifestyle. We’d see people come in and out of the hostel and they were somewhat institutionalised by living on the street. It was a completely normal environment for them and I’d often hear, ‘I have freedom when I’m living on the street’. I think that’s an interesting psychological issue that’s extremely complex and needs further research.
Another thing people need to understand is that after someone has experienced homelessness, even for a relatively short period of time, that’s probably going to affect them in some way or another for the rest of their lives. I’m trying not to sound cliché here but it’s a trauma inducing experience. For me, I went from a family living on top of each other to a quite isolating hostel filled with, for lack of a better phrase, intense drama. One of the hardest things for me after this experience immediately was finding comfort in being alone, another is having difficulty feeling safe and secure. Fortunately through therapy, through a secure living situation, and a stable work environment I’ve had the opportunity to heal and find my feet. I whole-heartedly believe every person, with the right support, has the potential to find the same. I’ve surely never met anyone who walks into their teenage and adult lives wanting to relinquish control of their lives to whatever infrastructure is available to help them.
What’s a typical day like for you as a van driver at Emmaus?
It’s quite routine, I drive the van. I come in, check what jobs we have, put them in order, load and unload the van, go out to do our deliveries, and have a good time while we’re doing it! It’s a fun job. Quite often we’ll pull up at traffic lights and people will see us having a laugh, dancing to the radio and it puts a smile on their faces, it feels good!
We meet all sorts of people from all walks of life and see all sorts of places too. We did a house clearance recently in a beautiful six-bedroom house! Equally, we’ve done some solidarity jobs and have met people who are really struggling. Helping out and having the capacity to help out, well I sleep well at night when I come home from a hard day’s work let’s put it that way.
Have there been any notable highlights?
In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve seen the development of people who are going through Emmaus which is actually something quite magical to witness. Seeing people move on successfully is really rewarding.
We’ve done some really cool stuff out on the vans too, like an art place moving out of Bristol. During the clearance, we were pulling out all these crazy items from a person’s warehouse and that had been featured in film sets, it was really good fun.
Something else I always find rewarding is taking the stress out of house clearances when someone has passed away. It’s a painful experience losing someone, and I hope we can provide some solace in allowing them to leave it to us. The customer can go and sit in a café, we do our work with the utmost respect. The approach I take to these jobs is to take all of the anxiety and weight away from the customer where possible, and I feel we achieve that.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Emmaus?
The people, 100% the people. And the fact that we’re always doing something good. In contrast to other jobs I’ve had, I come back feeling fulfilled from every day here, which to me means the world. You can earn more money elsewhere, but you can’t always feel good about it. That’s a big thing.
How would you describe Emmaus in one sentence?
If I had to summarise it in one sentence, I’d say Emmaus changes people’s lives.
What are you most proud of since joining Emmaus?
I’m quite proud of the fact that I was hired here as a permanent employee from the agency. It feels like a bit of a nod to the work I did beforehand.
