Pop-ups to highlight homelessness in Guernsey

Thursday, 8 October 2026 12:56

Six installations showing the living conditions of homeless people in Guernsey are on display.

At Home in Guernsey was set up in 2024 after research found that at least 1 in 60 people living here were experiencing homelessness.

Tomorrow (10 October) is World Homeless Day.

To mark it, and bring the issue to life, the charity has set up six temporary installations, each representing a real-life local story.

They include sofas in Market Square and by the Liberation Monument, sleeping bags in the doorways of Lloyds branches, and tents outside Waitrose.

Operations Coordinator Caitlin Duquemin says they want people to reflect.

"A lot of people, we're all guilty of it, have a stereotype in our head of what we expect homelessness to look like.

"We think of someone rough sleeping in their sleeping bag somewhere in a UK city, but actually in Guernsey it does look quite different.

"An awful lot of our homelessness is very hidden.

"We have lots of people sofa surfing, we have lots of people living in temporary accommodation and B&Bs and things like that, forced to move from place to place to place very often because they don't have that security."

Caitlin explains why the pop-up in Market Square includes a baby's cot.

"We've got a quarter of people who filled out our homelessness notification form in the past year that have children staying with them as well.

"It's really just to challenge the idea of what homelessness looks like.

"And hopefully, help those people that maybe don't feel seen, know that support is available to them as well."

At Home in Guernsey says it has directly supported 122 people so far this year.

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