Some of England’s famous double-decker buses have a new purpose: helping the homeless

Ever since they were introduced at the turn of the 20th century, England’s iconic double-decker buses have moved billions of people. Now, some of these buses are being converted to serve the country’s most vulnerable population. Over the past 18 months, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the U.K. has almost doubled, with more than 130,000 households made homeless because of COVID-19. For them, somewhere to sleep is vital, but so is access to services like employment support, mental health assessment, financial training, haircuts, and dental care. [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]All of these services are now available as part of a pilot program set in a pair of converted double-decker buses. They’ve been stripped of their seats and repurposed into welcoming spaces with warm plywood and soft banquette seating. At 430 square feet—about the size of a two-car garage spread across two floors—a transitory bus may not seem like the ideal solution for people experiencing homelessness, but this project shows that clever design can go a long way. [Photo: Change Please]The initiative was developed by the Change Please Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to support people experiencing homelessness and fast-track them back into employment. (For the past five years, Change Please has also been training people who are homeless as baristas.) The first two buses were designed pro bono by tp bennett, a British architecture firm that recently transformed a 1970s structure in Manchester into an “ultra-green” office building. Mark Davies, a director at the company, says he drew from his experience designing yachts to make the most of a small space, albeit on a different kind of budget. “Good design doesn’t have to be a lot of money,” he says. “It can be something that has a function, a purpose.” [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]In many ways, a double-decker bus lends itself well to such a makeover. It is mobile, which means it can move wherever service is most needed. It’s already heated, and installing restroom services on a bus doesn’t pose any particular challenges (long-distance coaches, in fact, already come with a restroom). [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]On the ground floor, the architects put in a series of built-in cupboards, seating at the back, plus a restroom and a shower. Upstairs, where the square footage is larger because there is no driving compartment, they made room for closed-off support zones that are more private and away from the street. Each bus comes with a special service: One of them includes a state-of-the-art dentist’s office. Another one, yet to be converted, will be dedicated to mental health services, with several pods for counseling sessions. (This being a moving bus, everything was built-in and fixed to the wall. The original handrails also remain.) [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]The entire shell was lined with plywood and finished off with a kind of vinyl paneling that’s easy to maintain, and “can take a battering,” but Davies also wanted to introduce a sense of warmth. “We wanted a home away from home,” he says. Windows are lined with curtains and several plants are dotted around the space. “Planting does help with well-being, better air, but it also helps with the mood,” he says. “We felt that was really important.” [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]The buses will be in service five days a week. For two of those days, they will be parked in two strategic locations in London, including just outside of Hackney Town Hall in East London, where they have partnered with the NHS East London Foundation Trust. The rest of the week, they will roam around to places where homeless people tend to congregate, like the Strand in Central London. A nighttime service will be launching soon; converted buses will be parked at terminuses for people who usually sleep on other buses until they have to get off. The fact that the buses will be grounded for two days a week is particularly important because it provides stability for people who rely on the service. “People know we’re going to be there at a specific time, at a specific place, as opposed to us hoping that we stumble across them,” says Change Please founder Cemal Ezel. [Photo: ©Hufton+Crow]This wasn’t the first time a double-decker bus got such a makeover. In the summer of 2019, four decommissioned double-deckers were refurbished as low-tech alternative homeless shelters, some decked out with a kitchen and dining area, others equipped with sleeping pods. Ezel has no plans for his foundation’s buses to be used for sleeping. “Accommodation doesn’t need to be mobile,” he says. So far, the organization has purchased three buses (they each cost £18,000, but only because bus capacities in London have been halved due to the pandemic, which has bumped their value.) Several more buses are in the pipeline in Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, and potentially Paris.

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