We’re all culpable for rising death toll of the homeless
IN THE ongoing drama of Brexit, you might have missed the news that 726 homeless people died on the streets of England and Wales in 2018 – after the highest year-to-year increase since records began.
The rate at which this vulnerable group continues to perish would have defied belief not so long ago. These days, we seem strangely adjusted to the death and despair.
The homeless are regarded by many as parasitic and undeserving. This perception is fed by the failure of our leaders at local and national level to confront it. People are dying as a result of it.
It’s important to understand why so many come to regard the homeless and vulnerable as a nuisance. It’s not one individual homeless person many will come to resent but increasing numbers, year on year.
When the problem appears to be getting worse, despite our prior kindnesses, then offering still more support can feel pointless and futile. We become irritated because we feel powerless to do anything.
Our political leaders gauge this irritation and resentment ( for which they are responsible) and pander to it. Rather than address the root of the issue, it’s just easier for them if we blame the homeless.
In 2016, Labour-led Nottingham City Council was forced to withdraw an anti-begging ad campaign. The Advertising Standards Authority said the language used in the adverts “portrayed all beggars as disingenuous and undeserving individuals that would use direct donations for irresponsible means”.
The ads were deemed to have “reinforced negative stereotypes of a group of individuals, most of whom were likely to be considered as vulnerable, who faced a multitude of issues and required specialist support”.
This approach was echoed in Glasgow when, in May 2016, Robert Aldridge, chief executive of the charity Homeless Action Scotland, condemned the launch of a begging survey conducted by Community Safety Glasgow.
Disturbingly, the questionnaire asked residents if they had been affected by “aggressive begging” and, if so, how would they like it dealt with.
Sadly, if public hostility were all this vulnerable group had to contend with, then perhaps the problem wouldn’t seem so daunting.
What is most worrying, is how this hostility extends to the environment itself, finding expression in an increasingly callous, twisted, urban landscape. An urban landscape which to you and I may appear trendy and modern, but to a person with nowhere to live, use a toilet or even sit down, is the closest thing a person can get to hell.
Across Britain, the real innovation where homelessness is concerned is not found in our approaches to supporting the homeless, but in the many inventive, trail-blazing ways we deter them from public spaces. In different towns and cities, you’ll find countless examples of “hostile architecture”.
Also known as hostile design, this approach is famous for producing “anti-homeless spikes” – metal studs embedded in flat surfaces to make loitering, begging or rough sleeping dangerous or uncomfortable. Hostile design directly targets those who rely on public space more regularly than others and represents something of a boon for up-and-coming product designers and architects as rough sleeping continues to rise.
This deliberate and callous form of social engineering complements political neglect and public resentment, producing the desired effect – we blame the homeless for being a nuisance, loitering in places they need not be, despite literally making it our business that they have nowhere to go.
At the root of all of this is our collective indifference as citizens, who rank this problem very low in our hierarchy of selfish concerns.
If we want to know why record numbers are dying, we need look no further than the nearest reflective surface.