Manchester plans homeless beds in former housing office
The Alexandra Road housing and employment office is to be converted into 20 units for rough sleepers.
Manchester City Council has applied to itself for permission to redevelop the single-storey building, which is located next to the Windrush Millennium Centre.
A planning statement lodged with the application states that the single-storey nature of the building makes it ideal for redevelopment into temporary housing.
“This type of accommodation is a scarce resource and much needed by the homelessness service within the city as there is a shortage of adapted/accessible temporary accommodation to meet demand,” it states.
The facility would be staffed 24 hours a day and men and women using the service could stay for up to six months.
The scheme forms part of Manchester City Council’s efforts to increase the amount of homeless accommodation within the city and reduce the “prolonged and extremely costly use of unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation for single adults”, the planning statement says.
To learn more, search for reference number 145287/VO/2026 on Manchester City Council’s planning portal.
This is great news and should be done more often to prevent the blight of tents in properly random places around the city. Given these options available for rough sleepers (shoudl have been doing this a long time ago), theres no excuse now but to remove the tents by force whenever they pop up – it boils my blood thay they dont do this straight away!
By IMHO
Behind the glitz and glamour of Manchester’s skyscrapers lies thousands of poor homeless people. I’m not sure that the Manchester model of development is one that you would want to see replicated nationally.
By Anonymous
This will be another abandoned “homeless shelter” that MCC will over promise and not deliver on. People only have to look at Etrop Grange in Wythenshawe to see how it all ends up with street drinking and drug abuse happening in local areas. Even the local rugby club out back needs to spend the 1st hour of their mornings searching the pitch for needles.
By TD - Woodhouse park resident
No thanks !
Wouldn’t like it to be approved!
By Anonymous
Very good idea to house the homeless in a former housing and employment office in manchester, i hope this is the start of many projects to help manchesters homeless.
By Sharon