A South Yorkshire charity that has long paid hotel bills for homeless veterans has now bought its own house.
Help 4 Homeless Veterans purchased the £147,000 property in Rotherham in February. Named Wood House after founder Tom Wood, it will provide short-term emergency housing for four homeless veterans.
The charity launched a Buy a Brick campaign to raise funds for the purchase and said it expects to welcome the first veterans from 12 June.
Chief executive officer Steve Bentham-Bates said using hotels to support veterans until they could “move forward” had been expensive.
“So, in future rather than paying out hotel bills we’ve now managed to buy our own house,” he said.
Help 4 Homeless Veterans has assisted more than 1,000 ex-service personnel with housing problems since launching in 2010. The organisation said it “takes pride” in avoiding “layers of management and bureaucracy” and was awarded a Queen’s Award for voluntary service in 2020.
The four-bed property on Station Road will provide temporary accommodation for veterans for a maximum of four weeks until they can “get back on their feet”.
Bentham-Bates, 70, who left the RAF in 1996, said the accommodation was a “stepping stone”.
“We’ve supported guys of all ages from 20 to 73 and we’ve had them from every war that we’ve been involved with since Northern Ireland.”
He said the charity had helped veterans who served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands.
“It’s nearly always men, it’s a relationship breakdown and they end up having to leave the family home they’ve run out of sofas to surf with their friends.
“We anticipate being able to move veterans onto somewhere of their own within a month and we’ll help them financially make that step forward. So, they won’t be charged rent, they’re here as our guests”.
Names of donors to the Buy a Brick campaign will feature in a roll of honour displayed in Wood House.
Not-for-profit group Efficiency North worked with businesses and tradespeople to carry out £30,000 of repairs and refurbishments to the house.
Liz Butcher, from the group, said: “We put out a call for help and we had a fantastic response,
“There’s a lot of crossovers between the construction and the armed forces.”
She said many people leaving the forces joined the industry and had been “only too willing to help”.
Bentham-Bates said it was important to remember the “fragile” state some veterans might be in.
“They’ve served in a war zone, they’ve seen some of their mates killed, some of them horrifically injured, perhaps losing limbs, you imagine that yourself if you witness something so horrific it would play on your mind.”
He said the charity’s work was appreciated.
“I helped a lad in Barnsley, who’d been sleeping in the woods,” he said.
“We put him in a hotel in Barnsley and he phoned me up later on and said: ‘I’ve just had a hot shower and washed my underwear. I feel lovely’.
“We’re making a difference to people that have potentially put their lives at risk for the country.”
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