Hello and

I'm in the BBC World Service.

I'm Simon Cox and I'm in the UK

where there's a crisis of homelessness.

I'm at a warehouse in an industrial estate in the east of London in the old Docklands area,

the River Thames is just outside and supplies are being delivered here for a charity called

crisis they run special Christmas shelters for thousands of people in the UK who

sleep on the streets and Michael you're the resources coordinator you're

marshalling all of these supplies that are coming in what sort of things have you got in so

far so lot yeah lots of rice,

and 98,000 tea bags, lots and lots of tinned food.

Kind people have collected those for us.

How many meals will you make over the eight days that you're running the shelters?

All together it would be in the region of just over 30,000 miles.

So breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, which across 10 centres for 8 days, is certainly a big

undertaking.

This is only part of Britain's homelessness problem.

There's a far greater number around 250,000 hidden

homeless who aren't living on the streets but they definitely don't have a

home and this number has risen significantly in recent years to find out why I've come to a pretty

scruffy street in South London.

It's full of fast food shops, pubs, and lawyers offices.

...