“I decided to go into [homeless charity] Crisis’s day centre. I felt really out of place. I was this young person looking around at all these guys that I was quite scared of. I thought, These are the people I’ve been avoiding in squats.”

When she spoke to a member of staff, Ecola said, she “bottled it”. “I was saying I was just there to do tai chi and to use the art studios and she was like, ‘Well, you are homeless’ and I said, ‘No it’s fine, I just want help looking for a job.’ I couldn’t get my head round talking to her about all the situations I’d been in I really needed help for.”

Shame was part of it, but also, said Ecola, “I didn’t feel as entitled as other other people I saw in the service. I looked after myself. I wasn’t a heroin addict. I’d been homeless for years but I didn’t feel I was at the same rock bottom. You have this image in your mind of what a homeless person is. You never consider that you’re that person. You don’t consider yourself to have a drug problem or a mental health problem or that you’re homeless; you just see yourself as being a squatter that’s bouncing around and partying a bit too much.”

This self-image, distinct from the typical notion of a homeless person, is common among young LGBT homeless people, said Ecola – something that she found in her later job as an outreach worker and which further informed her determination to set up the LGBT shelter.

“You don’t really feel you belong in those [mainstream homelessness] services or that they would really understand your needs, or that it’s actually safe for you.”

In 2016, seven years after becoming an outreach worker and officially no longer being homeless, Ecola moved in with her wife, which prompted another realisation that led to the bus project.

“I realised that I’d never felt comfortable where I’ve lived,” she said. “I was quite sad about the fact that I’d never really had stable housing before or felt I had anywhere that was my own, never had a proper tenancy.”

Her vision, therefore, for the LGBT shelter, is one in which the needs of the service users can be properly understood – and therefore the right help can be offered.

Even, she said, “identifying other needs around sexual health or other risks like chemsex [the use of crystal meth, GHB, and mephedrone with sex]. These are things we would be able to talk to our clients about if they were to disclose their sexuality or gender identity.”

Overall, she said, the more layers of difficulties individuals and communities face, the more specialised help is needed, particularly when resources and help is so stretched elsewhere. This is the only way that the most vulnerable are to be protected. “As a minority we are more at risk,” she said. “But the sector hasn’t really responded to it."