Charity founder Richie Roncero, 42, has started a six-month rough sleeping challenge to raise £1million for addiction recovery beds. He began sleeping on the streets of Glasgow on Saturday and plans to spend seven nights sleeping rough in 26 locations across the UK.
Roncero, who battled addiction for 16 years, said he had taken calls from families begging for help as people died while on waiting lists for recovery support.
He said: "I'm giving up my security and risking my mental health, putting it all on show for the world to see which is daunting. It's hard to carry yourself and motivate yourself when you're at low points with your mental health, and that will happen. But we have people dying on our waiting lists and I take calls from parents, and kids, people begging for their loved ones to get support."
Milestone Moments Alone
The challenge, which is due to end on April 17 next year, will see Roncero spending many milestone moments alone on the street. He said: "I'll miss Christmas and New Year with my family, and I'll be out on my recovery birthday when I turn 12 years sober. I'll be out on my actual birthday as well, and I'll be missing my daughter's birthday too."
Supporters had already raised more than £250,000 through donations and fundraising challenges of their own. The money would help build and run five additional bedrooms at Hope House, which opened in 2024 and currently had room for ten people. Planning permission for the extension had already been secured.
Expanding Hope House
Roncero said: "I'm doing this to raise funds so that we can build an extension onto Hope House, our ten-bedroom residential property. Now we have planning permission for a further five bedrooms. It's to meet the demand for our services. We have so many people every day phoning to come in here. We are doing so many assessments and we can't turn beds around quickly enough. It got to the point that people have passed away on our waiting list because we haven't been able to get a bed quickly enough."
Roncero founded Steps to Hope in 2018. A previous eight-week rough sleeping challenge raised £250,000 and helped the charity open Hope House, a ten-bedroom residential recovery programme.
This time, he faces six months through the coldest part of the year, carrying only a sleeping bag, phone, toothbrush and 100 information leaflets for each stop. He plans to live-stream his experiences to raise awareness of the realities of homelessness, while travelling to places including London, Manchester, Cardiff, Belfast, Derry, Newcastle and Birmingham.
Mental and Physical Toll
Having experienced homelessness himself, Roncero knew the physical and mental toll of returning to the streets. He said: "There's not one bit of me that wants to do this. I'm losing sleep already, up in the middle of the night. My head is going, trying to prepare myself for six months on concrete. It's not safe, there's no guarantee, no certainty, I'll be alone and isolated."
He added: "I was in active addiction for 16 years but I won't be taking something that's going to knock me out and let me get a sleep. I'll be sleeping 20 minutes at a time, because you hear a noise, your head's up, checking if anything's coming. It's exhausting. But Steps to Hope is my life, seven days a week. My juice comes from watching other people's lives get better and improve. I can see that magic in Hope House, I can see that getting better every single day."
