The Mayor of Douglas Debbie Pitts will be helping to highlight homelessness in the Isle of Man on Saturday October 28 from 11am to 3pm when she will be joining forces with Barclays Bank and Manx charity Housing Matters in support of The Hidden Homeless, a campaign highlighting sofa surfing in the island.

She will be among volunteers on sofas at three town-centre locations – Regent Street, Granville Street and the former bus station site at Lord Street - to illustrate the growing plight of people, many of them young adults, having to sleep on friends’ couches or worse, on the streets.

She explained: ‘After meeting Julie Marshall of Housing Matters, I was blown away to learn there is a very real - and growing - homeless situation in the Isle of Man. For me, I was shocked to realise how it could happen to anyone. The fact that your circumstances can change at any time in your life, sometimes through no fault of your own, can mean you end up homeless, and that’s a crisis that impacts on every aspect of a person’s life.

‘Your family may not be close or not in a position to help, so where do you go? Who will help you? The government has no statutory responsibility to provide people with a home, which is why it’s all the more important that people support the potentially life-saving services Housing Matters provides.

‘When you don't have a permanent address, things can become more difficult: claiming benefits to help you, applying for jobs and keeping your personal belongings safe, for example. It’s factors like these that crush a person’s self-confidence and make them feel they have no sense of worth.

‘Homelessness is devastating, dangerous and isolating. This is why I am supporting The Hidden Homeless campaign.’