The number of homeless deaths is an entirely preventable tragedy. What are we doing?

The sad news is that 1,611 homeless people died last year in the UK, a 9% increase on last year. The deaths were mainly linked to drugs. Ninety per cent were living in hostels or temporary accommodation. So 10% were rough sleepers. Some took their own lives but the majority were people left to face the terrors of dependence on alcohol mixed with drugs largely on their own. 

What is encouraging, if there is a such thing in such tragic circumstances, is that Wales and Scotland saw a fall in the numbers over the last year. With Scotland seriously addressing the issues by giving the physical and mental health support necessary to reduce chances of death or serious harm. Alas Northern Ireland and England are where the increase has been chalked up and where urgent work needs to be done to end this tragedy. 

Political will – voices from the top, mixed in with a cutting through of promise to delivery – is what is called for. Taking a leaf out of the Blair/Brown administration’s book from 1997 onwards would greatly enhance the getting from promise to delivery. At that time there was a strong sense that the Treasury and Number 10 were working in unity to reverse the number of people declining into homelessness.

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The post-Thatcher regime of John Major had also addressed the issue, with the the-Sir George Young, now Lord Young of Cookham, leading the fight. Flats and shelters, accommodation off the streets and the beefing up of homeless providers did a sizeable good. A good that Blair’s administration could build on.

So if we want to reduce and eradicate the terrible situation where homeless people are dying because of habits they pick up largely as a way to cope with street life, we must put the necessary resources to the problem. 

But every plus in life usually brings a minus. And the minus that these figures throw up is the (lack of) thinking around intervention in the crisis of homelessness. For though people were helped from the street and given some support, the underlying reasons – the mental demons that drove people to homelessness – were rarely addressed.

So what you had under Blair and previously Major was a material provision of housing and staff and some rudimentary support. But the dismantling of the mentality that went with drink and drug use was left unattended to. 

If you look at the decrease in homeless deaths in Scotland it is due to Scotland’s determination to unlock the crisis of homelessness within the person themselves. That is, entering the mental health landscape and utilising resources and support to enable people to come out with a clean bill of health. The Housing First initiative that Scotland has championed, getting people homed and then giving wraparound support, has been one of the keys to successful intervention. 

Simply giving someone a bed and a place to sit and eat and sit and ruminate is not enough. For the reasons why the social illness of drug dependency breaks out and overwhelms people’s lives must be addressed. We must push hard on central government to make available the kind of measures and supports that will ensure that it’s not just a roof over your head that is supplied: we need a full support service that helps get the reasons why people are homeless in the first instance out of their system. 

We also have to face up to the dreadful truths thrown up by our social class system. The vast majority of people I have met are the inheritors of poverty. I would say 90% of the people I meet through homelessness, and have met over the decades, have had the inheritance of poverty thrust upon them at birth. They are coming from behind. To get to the starting line it may take years, or actually never be achieved. 

Read more:

• Marmot principles should be applied to government departments for ending poverty
• How government inaction is radicalising Britain
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Well done to those who climbed out of need and privation, who got a route out. Angela Rayner managed to do so by tapping into natural talents that only needed stirring and encouraging. Her downfall does not militate against her ascendancy. Her route was through the time-honoured traditional trade union movement that enables officials to jump classes.

Former postman and poverty boy Alan Johnson did so to end up a government minister. And Rayner is another example. But they got extra help – a helping hand. Likewise I got out of poverty and need because every time I was arrested and sentenced I was taught something new. 

I was re-educated and that was the great helping hand. 

But the millions born to inherited poverty are more likely to remain in poverty for the whole of their lives. No government since the Second World War has addressed this inheritance of poverty, they have just prolonged the class divisions of ‘them and us’. government makes largely the same promises.

The tragedy of 1,611 deaths from the damage wrought by poverty leading to addiction is something that we could eliminate if government put serious resources into not allowing poverty to be all that you have at birth. We need those resources.

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