THE DEATHS THAT DO NOT COUNT
THE STRUGGLE IN DISCOVERING HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE DYING ON OUR STREETS
JONATHAN Billings is standing in the porch of the Wellspring, the homeless charity he runs in Stockport town centre. On the wall is a myriad of faces, mostly men, all with names underneath, some also with ages. One has no picture, just the name ‘Neville’.
“We didn’t even know his surname,” he says. “A week after we opened, he was found dead in a doorway. It was his death that really got people involved in the charity.”
The Wellspring is one of few organisations to keep a record every time a homeless person they know dies.
Incredibly, no public agencies – not the police, not councils, not coroners, not the NHS, not the government – bother to properly track them, which is why I’ve come to see Jonathan.
Moving along the rows of faces, he continues.
“Sean killed himself,” he says, nodding to one man. “He jumped out of a top storey window a couple of months ago.
“Matthew died about six months ago. He massively overdosed on heroin in the toilets in the Merseyway. He went in the toilet at 8am and they didn’t find him until they were shutting it at night. They had to break the door down.
“David died smoking in the back of his van.
“Richard was such a lovely lad. He had a Spice episode. They found him last winter under a bush. He died in hospital.”
And of a handsome, cheerful face: “Daniel went through Manchester City’s academy as a kid.
“He was a brilliant footballer, died from liver failure after a couple of years of alcohol abuse. He really could have been a footballer, he was so gifted.”
Finally, to arguably the most symbolic death.
“Stefan Tomkins was in the bin,” he says, sadly.
Stefan, described by his parents as an athletic, promising student who had dropped out of university after tipping into a ‘bottomless’ spiral of drugs, was 31 when he died in 2009.
The photo shows him as a fresh- faced, fluffy-haired 12 or 13-year-old in the early 1990s, smiling through a brace.
“He was crushed to death in the bin by the bin lorry,” says Jonathan, “on the night they did the annual rough sleeper count and didn’t find anybody.”
I am here because a week earlier, on the morning of July 29, the body of a rough sleeper had been found in Manchester city centre.
In the following day’s news conference the editor had said, quite reasonably, that we should do something broader about how many homeless people die, and who they are.
“Nobody really records them,” I said.
Which, inevitably, ended up becoming the point of this article.
Researching this story has proved that trying to find out how many Stefans, Davids or Daniels there have been is literally impossible.
Incredibly, for a conurbation with such a high-profile homelessness problem, no-one apart from individual charities counts deaths properly or builds a picture of what, collectively, their circumstances, locations, ages or causes of death might tell us. Often all you are left with is information - sometimes not quite accurate - that drifts back either from helpful homelessness workers or people on the streets themselves. In the case of the young man found on Whitworth Street West a couple of weeks ago, we only knew he had died in the first place because a member of the public rang in to say the road was shut early on Sunday morning.
By the time a reporter called the police about it, his death had already been declared ‘non-suspicious’ and the road swiftly reopened.
When my colleague Steve went out the next day to ask other rough sleepers what had happened, he was told the man was called Donn Morgan, he was in this 30s and from Wythenshawe.
They spoke, too, of a second death – a man called Luke. We tracked him down on Facebook: his name was Luke Urmston. He died within days of Donn Morgan, yards away. Both names were subsequently confirmed to us by the coroner, but we never would have known about either of them had it not been for chance.
Added to those two recent deaths is also a third: Stephen Donoghue, 40, a well-known rough sleeper who died after being found in the canal in Ancoats at the end of June.
Again, we only know he died because a charity contact mentioned it.
That’s three deaths on the city centre’s streets in just over a month, all of which we discovered by luck.
There may have been one or two others in recent weeks, too, for whom we only have first names, along with blurry third-hand details of possible Spice overdoses.
Have there been more? We don’t know. No proper figures exist. No press releases are issued. We are stabbing around in the dark. All of which makes you wonder: if these were CEOs who had been found dead, or doctors, or in fact anyone of
some sort of social status, would there be this much silence?
One public official suggested last week, when I asked them about the latest street deaths, that I was just working off ‘anecdote’ rather than ‘fact’. But that’s the problem: however many times you ask, public agencies don’t keep or release many ‘facts’ on homeless deaths.
Death on the street is only part of the picture, however.
Beyond the fleeting road closures and canalside cordons are the many, many other hidden homeless people who die while destitute, languishing in temporary accommodation, guest houses and bed and breakfasts.
Derek Jackson, 63, was one of them.
An alcoholic, he was found a couple of years ago by the Wellspring and his family in a Middleton flat so squalid that the charity says it had never seen anything like it. Neighbours had been taking money from him and no public agency appeared to have intervened.
The Wellspring rescued him and placed him into a Stockport B&B, where he fell ill and died.
His son Mike is under no illusions that it was alcohol that ultimately led to Derek’s death. He hadn’t really seen his dad – who was originally a taxi driver before his marriage broke down and he tipped into alcoholism – for years, for exactly that reason.
Nevertheless, for him it is all too easy for homeless people, and their deaths, to become invisible. “People might look at a homeless man and think ‘it doesn’t matter about him’,” he says. “But they’ve still got someone who loves them, who is searching for them. They are just lost, aren’t they? “My dad was only homeless for about a week, but he might as well have been sleeping rough in that flat we had found him in.” Derek’s is not an unfamiliar story to those working in homelessness. Yet his death doesn’t exist anywhere in any meaningful figures, even if he is on the Wellspring’s memorial wall. Just as it is currently impossible to actually know how many hidden homeless people like him there are, equally it is hard to know how many of them are dying, or why. The notorious Val’s hotel in Ardwick is a good case in point.
Val’s has been known for years among charities and council officers as somewhere you enter at your peril. When I first started writing about homelessness five years ago its name came up quickly for all the wrong reasons.
Late last year, I heard that at least two homeless people had recently died in there, so I started asking some questions about what had happened.
The police said they couldn’t find the query on their system, so they couldn’t help, or find out any more.
So I tried using the Freedom of Information Act to ask the police and ambulance service about Val’s, but while the information I got back was useful in showing how much of
If these were CEOs or doctors who had been found dead, would there be this much silence? Jennifer Williams
‘If this was posh people there would be uproar’
a nightmare the place was for other reasons, it didn’t show up any deaths.
This didn’t sound right. But I moved on with the story I was already writing about hidden homeless slums, still with the deaths lurking in the back of my mind.
Then, a few months later – just after we had published that investigation in March – I heard about more deaths at the hotel.
I went to the council. If this many people had died in quick succession in a dodgy hotel long known for being unofficial homelessness accommodation, presumably either the council’s housing or homelessness departments would know about it.
But the council said that it didn’t - and sent me back to the police, who weren’t investigating, because no crime had been committed.
It turns out, however, that those people I had heard about did indeed exist and did indeed die.
William Richardson died in October. Kevin O’Hanlon and John Mongan died in December. John Barnes and Neil Gibson both died on March 24. Five deaths in six months. Nevertheless Val’s held onto its council-issued ‘housing of multiple occupation’ licence right up to the point it was sold at the start of the summer, before burning down.
Last week I asked the council again about the people who died there, this time armed with their names and coroner’s confirmation of their deaths.
“Anecdotally, we were aware that there had been a couple of deaths at Val’s,” it said.
“However, as there was no official mechanism for reporting deaths we were not aware of the names of the people, number of deaths or the circumstances.”
A ‘new process’ is now planned to rectify that, it added. How was Val’s able to hold on to its licence if the council knew people were dying there, albeit ‘anecdotally’? “At present there is nothing requiring any HMO licensed landlord to inform the council about any deaths in their properties,” it said. “If any of the deaths had related to the management of the property or the living conditions in the property then a review of the landlord’s procedures could have been undertaken.” Ultimately, there were no boxes to tick, so none were ticked. Homeless death is, as you may have gathered, an infuriatingly difficult issue to investigate: impossible to pin down. Are numbers going up or going down? And where? And possibly most importantly, why? The closest I’ve got to an answer is a set of figures from Manchester’s coroner (no others in Greater Manchester could provide any numbers) and some ballpark estimates from the council.
Manchester’s coroner doesn’t record how many homeless deaths there have been in the city in total, but can say its office has investigated 50 deaths of ‘no fixed abode’ in the last five years. Those deaths have been steadily creeping up each year. In 2018, the coroner has been recording roughly one every six weeks.
The average age for someone listed as ‘no fixed abode’ is 43. Of the 50 deaths, 48 were men. The youngest was 28, the oldest was 90.
In addition, the council says 23 people it has ‘officially’ placed into temporary accommodation have died since 2010, figures that have never previously been published anywhere. If this sounds low, it’s worth bearing in mind that they will only apply to those owed a legal rehousing duty by the council, which doesn’t apply to hundreds of others living in the B&Bs and guesthouses we reported in March.
Meanwhile, the council didn’t start counting rough sleeper deaths at all until the start of this year, but so far it says it is aware of nine. It hasn’t published that figure until now either and, it admits, this won’t be the real total, as there isn’t yet a proper counting system in place.
So this, after weeks – arguably months – of investigation, is the best I can do. It’s a very partial picture, but it does at least show that, at the bare minimum, one rough sleeper a month has been dying on Manchester’s streets this year. Charities believe the figure to be far higher.
I have no idea whatsoever how many homeless people are dying in bed and breakfasts.
National charity Homeless Link has long been angry about what is essentially a black hole of information nationally, arguing it is a ‘disgrace’ that public bodies do not join the dots.
It wants every local authority to use existing ‘safeguarding adults
reviews’ – similar to those used when a child dies in the care of the council – to check whether homeless deaths could have been prevented. None of these have been carried out so far in Manchester.
“In the past, deaths of people who are rough sleeping has been an invisible issue and the lack of attention and any data on this issue is damaging and needs to be addressed,” says Homeless Link chief executive Rick Henderson.
“The death of someone sleeping rough needs to be treated seriously and safeguarding adult reviews should be carried out for all such incidents, regardless of whether the individuals have had contact with statutory services.”
Homeless Link believes that without something of this nature – something all agencies can feed into, from the police to the council and the NHS – then dying while destitute does indeed render you invisible.
“We need access to reliable research as it will help us to understand and bring an end to this disgraceful issue,” adds Rick. “People who are homeless are often accessing multiple services, and yet still find it hard to get the support they need, and so effective partnership working is key.
“Reviews will help public and voluntary agencies to identify how they might have intervened earlier or worked differently to avoid an individual falling through the gaps.”
The last point is surely key. If the system doesn’t pay attention to these deaths, it’s less likely to try and stop more from happening.
That’s particularly important when you consider many homeless people were originally in the care of the state to begin with. Many on the city’s streets have no family to inform if they die, and nobody to kick up a fuss if they do.
City centre youth charity Lifeshare acts as official next of kin to around two thirds of the young people it sees for exactly that reason. Its former criminal justice lead Julie Boyle echoes the private thoughts of many charities I ask about the situa- tion. “If it was posh people dying in this way, it would be uproar,” she says. “But because they’re runaways, or they’ve been in care, or they’re prostitutes, the system doesn’t care.”
Back in Stockport, Jonathan is finding me a photo on his phone. It’s of Derek Jackson, the man they rescued from slum accommodation in Middleton.
“It was the worst flat I’ve ever been in,” he says, showing me the photo he was looking for.
“There was no water, no electricity. The door had been kicked in, other people were just coming in and using his flat, no locks. Just horrific.”
There is no question many people working in public agencies here care about people like Derek or Stefan Tomkins just as much as Jonathan Billings does.
But until their deaths are literally counted, institutional indifference will continue to tell a different story.
THERESA MAY has declared her aim to help homeless people ‘ turn their lives around’ as the Government launched a £100m plan to end rough sleeping on England’s streets by 2027.
The strategy was welcomed by homelessness charities, who said it would make a ‘real difference’ to people’s lives.
However, they warned it will not provide a ‘total fix’ for homelessness, which would require a significant increase in social housing, more security for renters and the reversal of policies which leave migrants homeless.
The new strategy, revealed by Communities Secretary James Brokenshire, will offer support with mental health and addictions as well as help with accommodation.
Based on a three-pronged approach of prevention, intervention and recovery, it focuses on efforts to stop people becoming homeless in the first place, with swift, targeted support to get those in crisis off the streets and into long-term housing.
The strategy includes £50m for homes outside London for people ready to move on from hostels or refuges and £30m for mental health support for rough sleepers. A new network of specialist ‘navigators’ will help rough sleepers access services and accommodation.
There will be training for frontline staff on how to help people under the influence of artificial cannabinoid Spice.
Ministers are also expected to review legislation on homelessness and rough sleeping, including the Vagrancy Act, which dates back to 1824 and still makes it illegal to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales.
Mrs May said: “Nobody should have to sleep rough and that’s why we must do all we can to help the most vulnerable in our society get the support they need.
“But we recognise this is a complex issue – as well as ensuring people have somewhere to live, we have to deal with underlying problems and ultimately help people turn their lives around.”
In a joint statement, seven homelessness charities which advised ministers hailed the strategy as ‘a significant step towards the government’s goal of ending rough sleeping by 2027’.
However, the charities – Crisis, Homeless Link, National Housing Federation, Shelter, St Basils, St Mungo’s and Thames Reach – warned plans must include building more social housing, fostering greater security for renters, and ensuring people ‘ have access to benefits and other support they need to help them keep their homes.’