The Sunday Times Magazine • 31for us.” One day, to Mike’s fury, he saw that
another had posted a stinging review on the
hotel’s Facebook page. “Ever felt you’ve
outstayed your welcome?” it said.
In December, with Covid in the
resurgence and a third lockdown looming,
Mike took the decision to close the hotel to
all but the homeless for Christmas. He
fervently hoped the development of a
vaccine, announced earlier that month,
meant this lockdown would be the last.
By March 2021, with more and more
people being vaccinated, it was time to start
preparing for the full and final reopening.
There was lots to do. Painting, new drains,
deep cleaning of the rooms to get rid of the
smell of smoke and weed. Mike asked
Charlie to do an inventory of all the china,
glass and cutlery — by now there were
150 missing spoons, mainly used for heating
heroin with a lighter.
On Monday, May 17, 2021, hotels were
permitted to reopen and on the same day the
Everyone In scheme came to an end. Mike,
Jacki and Charlie stood outside the hotel and
waved goodbye to their last guest, 62-year-
old Simon, whose life in the open air started
as an environmental protester. He was off to
an old people’s home in a nearby village.
“Bless him,” said Charlie, wiping a tear.
In total 100 homeless people stayed at
the hotel over 14 months, but there were
fewer positive outcomes — fewer guests
getting off the streets for good — than Mike
and his team had hoped for. Tommo, who
had been doing the mamba handstands in
the flowerbeds, had been taken away by thepolice, having breached the terms of his
probation and returned to prison. Tracy
had been moved on by the council after
a number of fights.
Mike’s dream of hiring some of the
homeless guests had not really come to
fruition, bar one exception. Throughout
April 2021 Titch had been popping by.
Mike paid him to clear the courtyard and
the car park. On the May bank holiday Mike
started him on trial as a kitchen porter. He
was so excited he would not stop talking.
They had to stop him drinking too many
energy drinks.
Yet what was supposed to be their best
happy ending went horribly wrong. Titch
spent his first wage packet on a waistcoat,
which he proudly came in wearing — but
then he disappeared. A group of local street
pastors found him flat out on mamba, on
the pavement, having banged his head.
“Not again,” Mike groaned. “We just
can’t risk employing him.”
Charlie tried everything to keep Titch in
accommodation. She managed to get him
into a B&B, but he kept letting others stay
in the room, which was against the rules, so
he was kicked out. Back on the streets, he
fell in with a bad group and one night joined
them in breaking into Superdrug, smashing
the window and grabbing £13,500 worth of
aftershave and perfume. All were arrested
and eventually given a 15-month prison
sentence. “It’s just a vicious circle,” said
Jacki. “Even if he gets clean, where will he go
when he gets out? It will start all over again.”
Laura Fisher, the head of housing for
Shropshire council, thought the hoteliers
had set their expectations too high. “For
many of these individuals, this is the longest
period they have been accommodated in one
place in their adult life,” she said. “To me,
success is not just those who moved on to
private accommodation and got jobs, but
also those who are now living in hostels,
like Stokesy, which would have been
unthinkable a year ago.”
And some of their former residents were
sorting themselves out. One of them, Peter,
had popped back to tell them he had got a
flat and a job as a chef in a local restaurant.
He was paying his bills. “My life has
changed dramatically,” he smiled. “I may
even have a lass in my life.” Their first guest,
Chris Bennett, also sent a photo with a new
girlfriend and a message saying, “I’m out of
that black hole and life is amazing.”
Yet at the end of the day it was the hotel
staff who felt they had benefited the most
from their year of very different guests.
“We gave them hope but they gave us
something much more,” says Mike n© Christina Lamb 2022. Extracted
from The Prince Rupert Hotel for the
Homeless: A True Story of Love and
Compassion Amid a Pandemic by
Christina Lamb, to be published by
HarperCollins on June 9 at £20Above: one of the homeless residents
chats with the manager, Charlie Green,
in the dining room. Opposite: the hotel’s
half-timbered Tudor exteriorTHEY DID AN
INVENTORY OF
CUTLERY. BY NOW
THERE WERE 150
MISSING SPOONS,
MAINLY USED FOR
HEATING HEROIN
WITH A LIGHTERANDREW FOX FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES, ALAMY