Scottish Café Chain Builds Village For Homeless

A sandwich restaurant chain that hires homeless people has gone one step further for their rough sleeping employees by building them their own tiny house eco-village.

Starting next month, the village’s 11 portable, eco-friendly houses will host up to 20 homeless people for 12 to 16 months. During their stay in the village, the residents will be given essential training, education, job resources, and transitional support until they can finally be helped into permanent housing at the end of their stay. Then, another 20 residents can move in for their own transition.

The village was built by Social Bite: a Scottish café and charity that has been training and hiring the homeless to work in their 6 locations across Edinburgh. In addition to 100% of their restaurant proceeds going to charity, Social Bite also provided over 100,000 items of free food to the homeless last year.

“Something special has been created,” said Angela Constance, the Scottish communities minister at the village’s launch on Thursday, according to Place.

“Not just building houses, but building homes, building community – a community that will provide support and enable folk to rebuild their lives.”

Cyrenians, the nonprofit that has been assessing village housing applications in partnership with Social Bite, says that one of the only conditions for admission is that residents should not have any ongoing substance abuse or addiction at the time of their application.

“The mark of any society is how you look after those who are most excluded. This village says an extraordinary thing about how we all want the world to be,” said Cyrenians chief executive Euan Aitken in a speech marking the opening of the village.





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