A FORMER drug abuser turned born-again Christian has set up a centre for homeless people and addicts to help turn their lives around.

John Hailes, 51, of Noak Bridge, Basildon, has converted a former five-bedroom student house in Pleasant Avenue, Southend, into a safe place for homeless people and other vulnerable, troubled people.

With four bedrooms and a fifth community room used for courses in everything from cookery to financial management, the house is already booked up with three homeless people and one methadone addict who came directly to John after hearing about the help they could receive at the centre.

John himself battled through dark days of drug abuse before becoming a Christian at the end of the Nineties. After changing his own life, he wanted to give others the power to do the same.

He said: “I spent a lot of years taking drugs then I became a Christian about 16 years ago and my life turned around.

“I went into the Fortune of War pub in Laindon to beat someone up who owed me money and I saw someone who I knew as a drug dealer but had become a Christian and he said ‘why don’t you have a drink with me?’”

Fast-forward a few years and it was John’s work with a Christian community outreach organisation that inspired him to open his own centre.

He said: “I worked with the Storehouse project in Southend for about seven years and saw lots of people just going round and round because we only had them for a little while then, all of a sudden, problems would materialise and they were back to square one.

“What we are trying to do here is turn people’s lives around by teaching them life skills, from financial management to cookery.

“There is a spiritual side as well. We want a place of safety and real community. We’re encouraging them to eat together as a family, the idea being to show them something different, which I don’t think anyone else is doing in Southend.”