A shelter for homeless families will be set up at the former US baselands in St. David's, if community activists have their way.

This was revealed yesterday during Hamilton Lions weekly luncheon at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

Institute of Child and Family Health founder Sheelagh Cooper explained that a shelter designed to give hope to homeless families would not only benefit them, but the entire community as well.

Mrs. Cooper outlined how the Headstart Residential Centre would help homeless families get back on their feet.

A combined effort between the Institute of Child and Family Health, the Physical Abuse Centre, the Fathers Resource Centre, the Coalition for the Protection of Children and PARENTS advocate group, would provide a wide range of services aimed at stopping the cycle of poverty in its tracks.

"The facility will provide badly needed shelter, but in order to break the cycle of poverty dependency and hopelessness we will have to provide more than just that,'' Mrs. Cooper explained.

"This facility will be designed to be a part of a process of empowerment, rediscovery, growth and ultimately hope for the families that find themselves there.'' She added that the shelter would offer day care, parenting programmes, conflict resolution training, counselling, therapeutic services, job retraining, nutrition classes, cooking and meal planning, budgeting and financial management, family planning as well as after-school education programmes for children.

Mrs. Cooper said she believed that such intensive intervention joined by "the right decision from Government'' to make affordable housing at the baselands a reality, would decrease violence, heal families and rebuild community spirit.

She also told members that the 250 unoccupied homes at Southside were going to waste and should be used to house poor families.

Mrs. Cooper stressed that generating revenue from the baselands was not as important as providing affordable housing to those who needed it most -- single black mothers with children.

She added that the problem of unaffordable housing needed to be addressed sooner rather than later.