A church in east London has erected three billboards in its grounds highlighting the thousands of local homeless people, inspired by the award-winning movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in which a mother campaigns for justice for her murdered daughter.
St Mary's in Stoke Newington, Hackney, has erected the billboards which state that 6,167 people are classified as homeless in Hackney and urge people to take action, the 'i' newspaper reported.
The billboard campaign emerged from the work of the community centre behind the church, St Mary's centre, which hosts Hackney Food Bank, Hackney Migrants' Centre and Hackney Winter Night Shelter to help homeless people, but was cope with demand.
Rev Dilly Baker told 'i' that Hackney can often feel like 'chic coffee shops and a lot of money...but there is another side to the gentrified area which is pockets of great poverty and marginalisation'.
She added: 'We here at St Mary's are involved and host a number of projects around the area of social justice and social activism. With this however has been an increased need for the resources. The migrant centre has dramatically upped the number of people that it serves and it can't serve them all because it's limited. We've got a food bank and a shelter, so it's breaking at the seams and we need to expand.
'A lot of people aren't aware of the problem so the billboards are a way of capturing people's attention and saying, "hey this is what's going on"...I think churches are one of the organisations which have always used billboards for its message but in a very traditional way. People just walk past and think there's the church with its disconnected message...Suddenly in this world of social media, people are returning to the idea of billboards to share its message and I think the church knows this and now needs to do it in more creative ways.'
Baker said of the area: 'I think we're the tenth worst borough in the country for homelessness. In the last five years property in Hackney has gone up about 80 per cent so when you look at that, it's easy to see why people fall into homelessness. We need a better way with dealing with housing as 1 in 44 people in Hackney are classified as homeless and whilst this doesn't strictly mean sleeping rough, it can include hotel accommodation or having no permanent address, it's still extremely worrying.'
St Mary's centre for homeless people can be reached here.
