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Arlington House must be saved
• I LIVE just a minute’s walk from Arlington House and I volunteered there for a while.
I used to help people who were moving out of the hostel into new homes.
On those journeys, in the hostel’s clapped-out old white van I got to know some of the most amazing people I have ever met. The sheer adversity they had faced in their life was amazing and, what’s more, they all, to a man, dealt with it with a quiet stoicism.
I remember once sitting in someone’s new flat listening to him explain to me the problems he had had with his mental health, with failed relationships, with his parents and with drugs. Completely stunned I asked him what he was going to do next. “Probably phone the electricity board to see when they’re coming” was his reply.
As far as I understand, now that ownership of the hostel has been transferred to One Housing Group the original stipulations which governed Novas’s use of the hostel no longer apply.
One Housing and Camden Council must ensure that Arlington is preserved as a hostel, as was intended when it was given over to Novas. We must ensure big private developers and the easily swayed councillors do not allow this asset to be lost. They are already selling off our council homes, they cannot be allowed to sell off Arlington.
Thomas Neumark
Gloucester Crescent, NW1
Publicly- run hostel
• IT is indeed outrageous the report into the affairs of the tax funded Novas charity should not have been published in full (Charity cronyism claims to be kept secret, July 16).
A hostel intended to provide for the homeless should not be run by a charity at all.
It should be returned to the public sector so that it is accountable to the public who fund it.
Ed McArthur
Theobalds Road, WC1
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