Sixty homeless people died in Wales last year
SIXTY homeless people died in Wales during 2021, a new report has revealed. The number of rough sleepers and people without a home who died in Wales was three fewer than in the year before.
Wales was the only country in the UK which saw a decline.
In England the number of deaths of homeless people increased from 630 to 719, in Scotland the total rose from 176 to 182, while the biggest increase was seen in Northern Ireland, which had 107 deaths in 2020 and 325 in 2021.
Across the UK as a whole, the number of homeless people dying went up from 976 to 1286 – an increase of 32%.
The report, whose statistics are based on answers to a series Freedom of Information Act requests, has been published by the Museum of Homelessness, which runs the Dying Homeless Project annually.
The organisation predicted the number of homeless people dying will rise as an estimated 1.3 million people are pushed into absolute poverty by the cost-of-living crisis.
In Wales the local authority with the highest number of homeless deaths was Cardiff, which saw an increase from 14 to 18.
The number of deaths in other Welsh local authority areas was Conwy, 6; Denbighshire, 1; Flintshire, 1; Gwynedd, 1; Neath Port Talbot, 8; Newport, 7; Pembrokeshire, 2; Powys, 1; Rhondda Cynon Taf, 4; Swansea, 8; Vale of Glamorgan, 1; Torfaen, 2. Other council areas had no recorded deaths of homeless people.
Cofounder of the Museum of Homelessness Jess Turtle said, “These findings are a hammer blow. It’s heart-breaking to see so many people dying and to feel so helpless in the face of such a serious emergency.
“Government neglect means things keep getting worse with new provision for mental health, addiction and social housing failing to make up for previous cuts.
“If the UK Government took this situation seriously, it wouldn’t have slashed the budget for discretionary housing payments by over a third last month - making it harder for councils to offer the people the breathing space they need to avoid homelessness.
”Reversing this £40m cut and ending the freeze on local housing allowance rates should be immediate priorities so that people have a fighting chance of meeting the spike in private rents.
“There needs to be a confidential enquiry into the deaths of homeless people to allow an honest appraisal of what’s happening to the UK’s most vulnerable people. There should also be mandatory fatality reviews for all local authorities – so lessons can be learned from each death.”
Ms Turtle added: “Only seven fatalities were due to Covid-19. However, cuts to mental health and addiction services mean too many people don’t get the support they need. Of the cases in which we have confirmed the cause of death, 41% were related to drug and alcohol use and 12% died from completing suicide.”
The other co-founder of the Museum of Homelessness, Matt Turtle, said: “Too many people are dying in dangerous accommodation run by unregulated landlords and funded by the taxpayer. Our research suggests over 90% of deaths in the cases where we know of a person’s situation occurred after they were placed in insecure accommodation.
“These often occur in taxpayer funded hostels which are exempt from the price cap local authorities apply to shared accommodation as they are meant to provide people experiencing homelessness with care as well as a safe place to live temporarily. But many fail to meet their most basic obligations.
Yesterday, Museum of Homelessness and frontline groups including the Simon Community, Streets Kitchen and The Outside Project held a vigil outside Downing Street from 6pm-8pm to commemorate those who have died.
IT’S shocking that 60 homeless people – more than one per week, on average – died in Wales last year.
It goes without saying that homelessness and vulnerability go together.
There must therefore be a concerted effort to provide homeless people with homes.
Of course there are enormous challenges, but the authorities must never give up trying to find solutions.
Unfortunately, political decisions have made the prospects for eliminating homelessness worse rather than better.
As the Museum of Homelessness – the organisation that compiles the statistics – points out, pushing a further 1.3 million people into absolute poverty as a result of benefit cuts is very likely to make more of them homeless.
Insufficient spending in other areas like mental health, addiction and social housing will also add to the problem.
An analysis of the causes of death in the cases of homeless people shows that a high proportion are drug or alcohol related.
This underpins the need for greater urgency to be given to curing those affected of their addictions.
Achieving such an aim is unlikely to occur while people remain without homes.
Authorities have long claimed that they can arrange shelter for anyone who is homeless and that there is no need for people to sleep rough.
Yet it’s clear a significant number of homeless people fail to take up any offers of accommodation that may be made.
According to the Museum of Homelessness, there is a general problem relating to homeless people being placed into dangerous accommodation run by unregulated landlords.
This should not be happening in Wales, which introduced legislation aimed at ending such abuses some years ago.
With as many as 60 deaths a year taking place, there is a good argument for a Wales-specific investigation into the provision of accommodation for homeless people, aimed at discovering what gaps exist and how they could be plugged.
Anything short of that would seem to confirm the belief held by sceptics that the authorities are complacent in their approach to tackling homelessness and that fresh energy needs to be injected into the endeavour.