‘We want another homeless hotel – and we can make it work’on June 13, 2021 at 11:50 pm

The Holiday Inn in Gorton, Manchester, housed homeless people throughout the pandemic, until the end of May.

Simon Potts, then 43, was one of those who arrived on the first night. The police officer who picked him up off the street said he was in a “sorry state – very thin, very dirty”. Simon had been sleeping in shop doorways for nearly three years having become homeless after the death of his partner. He had drug and alcohol addictions as well as hepatitis C, depression, and epilepsy.