“A national scandal”: 449 people died homeless in the last year
A grandmother who made potted plant gardens in shop doorways, found dead in a car park. A 51-year-old man who killed himself the day before his temporary accommodation ran out. A man who was tipped into a bin lorry while he slept.
These tragic stories represent just a few of at least 449 people who the Bureau can today reveal have died while homeless in the UK in the last 12 months - more than one person per day.
After learning that no official body counted the number of homeless people who have died, we set out to record all such deaths over the course of one year. Working with local journalists, charities and grassroots outreach groups to gather as much information as possible, the Bureau has compiled a first-of-its-kind database which lists the names of the dead and more importantly, tells their stories.
The findings have sparked outrage amongst homeless charities, with one expert calling the work a “wake-up call to see homelessness as a national emergency”.
Our investigation has prompted the Office for National Statistics to start producing its own figure on homeless deaths.
We found out about the deaths of hundreds of people, some as young as 18 and some as old as 94. They included a former soldier, a quantum physicist, a travelling musician, a father of two who volunteered in his community, and a chatty Big Issue seller. The true figure is likely to be much higher.
Some were found in shop doorways in the height of summer, others in tents hidden in winter woodland. Some were sent, terminally ill, to dingy hostels, while others died in temporary accommodation or hospital beds. Some lay dead for hours, weeks or months before anyone found them. Three men's bodies were so badly decomposed by the time they were discovered that forensic testing was needed to identify them.
They died from violence, drug overdoses, illnesses, suicide and murder, among other reasons. One man’s body showed signs of prolonged starvation.
You can read the stories of all those who died here
"A national disgrace"
Charities and experts responded with shock at the Bureau’s findings. Howard Sinclair, St Mungo’s chief executive, said: “These figures are nothing short of a national scandal. These deaths are premature and entirely preventable.”
“This important investigation lays bare the true brutality of our housing crisis,” said Polly Neate, CEO of Shelter. “Rising levels of homelessness are a national disgrace, but it is utterly unforgivable that so many homeless people are dying unnoticed and unaccounted for.”
Our data shows homeless people are dying decades younger than the general population. The average age of the people whose deaths we recorded was 49 for men and 53 for women.
“We know that sleeping rough is dangerous, but this investigation reminds us it’s deadly,” said Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis. “Those sleeping on our streets are exposed to everything from sub-zero temperatures, to violence and abuse, and fatal illnesses. They are 17 times more likely to be a victim of violence, twice as likely to die from infections, and nine times more likely to commit suicide.”
The Bureau’s Dying Homeless project has sparked widespread debate about the lack of data on homeless deaths.
Responding to our work, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has now confirmed that it will start compiling and releasing its own official estimate - a huge step forward.
For months the ONS has been analysing and cross-checking the Bureau’s database to create its own methodology for estimating homeless deaths, and plans to produce first-of-their-kind statistics in December this year.
A spokesperson said the information provided by the Bureau "helps us develop the most accurate method of identifying all the deaths that should be counted."
Naming the dead
Tracking homeless deaths is a complex task. Homeless people die in many different circumstances in many different places, and the fact they don’t have a home is not recorded on death certificates, even if it is a contributing factor.
There are also different definitions of homelessness. We used the same definition as that used by homeless charity Crisis; it defines someone as homeless if they are sleeping rough, or in emergency or temporary accommodation such as hostels and B&Bs, or sofa-surfing. In Northern Ireland, we were only able to count the deaths of people registered as officially homeless by the Housing Executive, most of whom were in temporary accommodation while they waited to be housed.
For the past nine months we have attended funerals, interviewed family members, collected coroners’ reports, spoken to doctors, shadowed homeless outreach teams, contacted soup kitchens and hostels and compiled scores of Freedom of Information requests. We have scoured local press reports and collaborated with our Bureau Local network of regional journalists across the country. In Northern Ireland we worked with The Detail's independent journalism team to find deaths there.
Of the 449 deaths in our database, we are able to publicly identify 138 people (we withheld the identity of dozens more at the request of those that knew them).
Of the cases in which we were able to find out where people died, more than half of the deaths happened on the streets.
These included mother-of-five Jayne Simpson, who died in the doorway of a highstreet bank in Stafford during the heatwave of early July. In the wake of her death the local charity that had been working with her, House of Bread, started a campaign called “Everyone knows a Jayne”, to try to raise awareness of how easy it is to fall into homelessness.
Forty-one-year-old Jean Louis Du Plessis also died on the streets in Bristol. He was found in his sleeping bag during the freezing weather conditions of Storm Eleanor. At his inquest the coroner found he had been in a state of “prolonged starvation”.
Russell Lane was sleeping in an industrial bin wrapped in an old carpet when it was tipped into a rubbish truck in Rochester in January. He suffered serious leg and hip injuries and died nine days later in hospital. He was 48 years old.
In other cases people died while in temporary accommodation, waiting for a permanent place to call home. Those included 30-year-old John Smith who was found dead on Christmas Day, in a hostel in Chester.
Or James Abbott who killed himself in a hotel in Croydon in October, the day before his stay in temporary accommodation was due to run out. A report from Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group said: “He [Mr Abbott] said his primary need was accommodation and if this was provided he would not have an inclination to end his life.” We logged two other suicides amongst the deaths in the database.
Many more homeless people were likely to have died unrecorded in hospitals, according to Alex Bax, CEO of Pathways, a homeless charity that works inside several hospitals across England. “Deaths on the street are only one part of the picture,” he said. “Many homeless people also die in hospital and with the right broad response these deaths could be prevented.”
Rising levels of homelessness
The number of people sleeping rough has doubled in England and Wales in the last five years, according to the latest figures, while the number of people classed as officially homeless has risen by 8%.
In Scotland the number of people applying to be classed as homeless rose last year for the first time in nine years. In Northern Ireland the number of homeless people rose by a third between 2012 and 2017.
Analysis of government figures also shows the number of people housed in bed and breakfast hotels in England and Wales increased by a third between 2012 and 2018, with the number of children and pregnant women in B&Bs and hostels rising by more than half.
“Unstable and expensive private renting, crippling welfare cuts and a severe lack of social housing have created this crisis,” said Shelter's Neate. “To prevent more people from having to experience the trauma of homelessness, the government must ensure housing benefit is enough to cover the cost of rents, and urgently ramp up its efforts to build many more social homes.”
The sheer scale of people dying due to poverty and homelessness was horrifying, said Crisis chief executive Sparkes.“This is a wake-up call to see homelessness as a national emergency,” he said.
Breaking down the data
Across our dataset, 69% of those that died were men and 21% were women (for the remaining 10% we did not have their gender).
For those we could identify, their ages ranged between 18 and 94.
At least nine of the deaths we recorded over the year were due to violence, including several deaths which were later confirmed to be murders.
Over 250 were in England and Wales, in part because systems to count in London are better developed than elsewhere in the UK.
London was the location of at least 109 deaths. The capital has the highest recorded rough sleeper count in England, according to official statistics, and information on the well-being of those living homeless is held in a centralised system called CHAIN. This allowed us to easily record many of the deaths in the capital although we heard of many others deaths in London that weren’t part of the CHAIN data.
In Scotland, we found details of 42 people who died in Scotland in the last year, but this is likely a big underestimate. Many of the deaths we registered happened in Edinburgh, while others were logged from Glasgow, the Shetland Islands and the Outer Hebrides.
Working with The Detail in Northern Ireland, we found details of 149 people who died in the country. Most died while waiting to be housed by the country’s Housing Executive - some may have been in leased accommodation while they waited, but they were officially classed as homeless.
“Not only will 449 families or significant others have to cope with their loss, they will have to face the injustice that their loved one was forced to live the last days of their life without the dignity of a decent roof over their head, and a basic safety net that might have prevented their death," Sparkes from Crisis. No one deserves this.”
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said:
“Every death of someone sleeping rough on our streets is one too many and we take this matter extremely seriously.
“We are investing £1.2bn to tackle all forms of homelessness, and have set out bold plans backed by £100m in funding to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it by 2027."
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Additional reporting by Rory Winters of The Detail who uncovered the data from Northern Ireland.
Comments
Thank you for this brilliant, important work. Having a 'target' to 'end rough sleeping' is not the same as having real policies to address the wider causes of homelessness.
If this is joanna Lane... It would be better to clear up the fact your brother wasn't homeless.
All well and good addressing the wider cause of homelessness. However this man Russell lane wasn't homeless. This man had a family. A daughter. A grandson. And a home in Southampton. Red Flag news.
I know Frist hand what it like to be homeless no we're call home most people think you get home and you be able to live a normal life so not true the damage that living on the street has taken its toll on you and your family I seen friends come and go some die others you just don't know we're there are it like the lost world been homeless all you have is lose drugs and drink be come so thing that never run out on you so stick closer than a brother it's there when you sleep it there when you wake up it there when you don't want it to be
It's a national scandal! There's a number of factors that contribute towards people ending up on the streets or in unsuitable accommodation. One of the issues the government needs to tackle is the way young people leaving the care system receive very little support. Add to that the diabolical way ex military personnel are treated, particularly those who have PTSD, plus people who are living in poverty even though they have jobs, people fleeing domestic violence with nowhere to go, it contributes to the issue of homelessness. It is a disgrace!
The govt will do nothing and will accept no responsibility. That is the world we live in now...a grey, hopeless, place where those with power can do what they please to those without. I can't see that ending unless we have a change of govt. Things like this shouldn't be happening in a First World country. But it is. And that is very sad.
The 'problem' of homelessness is found worldwide and is not new. In their book The Bleak Age: England 1800-1850 (1934) the Hammonds record this description of homes in Manchester in the 1840’s: 'They are built back to back; without ventilation or drainage; and, like a honeycomb, every particle of space is occupied. Double rows of these house form courts, with, perhaps, a pump at one end and a privy at the other, common to the occupants of about twenty houses. '
In The Housing Question (1872) Engels shows how and explains why reforms within capitalism always come up short. Corbyn's Party, Labour, promised a solution after WWII... News of a 'homeless community found living in dark, squalid tunnels... under the streets of Manchester' (The Sun, 2 May, 2017) should come as no surprise. The 'problem' of growing homelessness and those enduring sub-standard accommodation exists alongside thousands of unoccupied properties in London and Manchester, and over 200,000 in England.
There is no possibility of a rational approach to housing within capitalism. ‘As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of life and labour by the working class itself’ (The Housing Question).
Eric, you hit the nail on the head. If there is enough good will and money to finance wars and associated military R&D, and there is enough goodwill and money for "overseas aid", there surely is enough money for housing, but no goodwill. Grenfell has proven the point.
Some of these 'Homeless' dead people once had a house/home that genuinely belonged to them, but under POCA 2002, it has been confiscated.
It has come about that a person convicted of any crime involving financial benefit has been subjected by Parliament, since the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2002 to a law more draconian and manifestly unjust than anything ever devised by the state in modern times. This is the law which now applies to what are called - erroniously - confiscation proceedings.
This law now does not just apply to gangsters, money-launderers and heisters, drug-traffickers and hard line millions - illegal money-makers, which is was the original purpose of this law. It applies to more petty convictions.
It is one thing to punish an offender and deprive him of any money, fraudulently taken. The proceeds of his crime.; - it is quite another to punish him twice, because he has pleaded guilty, and then deprive him of property that is not the due process to the Proceed of Crime Act. This is punishment twice for the same offence, and where is the innocent until proven guilty which has always been anchored to the concepts of fairness and justice?
This is and always was the British doctrine of the Rule of Law and not, 'Justice behind closed doors', which a Lord (peer) of the law recently stated was very wrong.
The POCA is now a harsh law which leaves many people HOMELESS and as such in severly handicapped mental states, after the witchhunts that go on, the relentless bullying and intimidation until they have a break down. This may be some of the reasons why there are so many suicides in prisons and if they leave there, will have no where to live or go to.
No address means no help with benefits. Starvation, or reliance on charity.
This is is ongoing punishment and 'Degrading Treatment and Torture' one of the universal declarations of Human Rights.
One and a very obvious reason why there are deaths amongst homeless people and many who just give up with life.
The POCA is never cruel to those who are already rich. They do not die homeless, as they will always have a property, and of course, afford the very best in defence teams to get them off from any possible prosecution instigated by bullies who prey on the weak.
Your take on the situation couldn't be any more true. I know because I have experienced/ lived through this scenario in exactly the way you have described it. It's so very difficult to accept the reality of what some are actually capable of doing to their fellow human beings in the name of greed and power . Truly a heartbreaking situation
Some of what you say is blatantly untrue. IF you genuinely become homeless there is help if you seek it out. On the other issue if you defraud or steal and are unable to prove one asset ie 1 residential property was not legally obtained by a spouse etc you deserve everything you get.
I lost my friend who was homeless at the beginning of this year. Unfortunally I got no chance to say good bye to him. I didnt get an information about his death and no further information because I am not a relative.
I am extremely privileged in so many ways. But have at many times in my life been temporarily or voluntarily homeless. Even last summer, aged 70, I was travelling in Wales, visiting friends who were unwilling or unable to accommodate me. I had virtually no money, but had a sleeping bag and slept under the stars at Craven Arms. It was very cold, so got dressed at 5am and went to the bus stop to wait for first bus (8.30). A night security guy drove past and stopped to ask what I was doing. I told him I was a traveller and he came back after half an hour with hot coffee, packet of custard creams and cigarettes. Good old Brummie lad! Two days later I was trying to reach Bristol, but only had enough to get to Birmingham by train (Of course I have a bus pass). I sat in New Street station where Costa were more than happy to provide hot water for my teabags. I noticed they had a charity box on the counter for homeless. I really did not know where to go when the station closed at 1.30am. There was no information for homeless as to hostels etc. and no police around to ask (private security only 'we can recommend a hotel' haha, also no public/free toilet. I just prayed for an hour or more then headed out through the revellers (it was Saturday night) and through a maze of building sites and slick new hotels and office buildings, and quickly found a patch of grass under a tree in the lee of some flats. I apologize to the inhabitants I had to use that place as a toilet as well as bedroom, but it felt so cosy and quiet (fortunately a warm night), just over the wall from the canal towpath. Slept like a baby and woke next morning full of hope. Soon found a bus to take me close to M5 services and was soon in Bristol at my nephews house. Later, I visited friends in Bath, and they took me to the station where I had already booked a train from Bath back to London, where I live.
What is the point of this short episode? Just, if you are not a super-safe personality it's easy to get caught out even with friends or family, who may offer you a cup of tea for an hours visit but then ask you to leave. Also, I am somewhat eccentric and have been on medication for bipolar and depression, but love an adventure. But risky at my age and I had a heavy cold and cough at the time which I was treating with fresh ginger and lemon which I put in my tea. I also got a cheap jar of honey in Lidl and a 50p potato peeler in Wilco to slice the ginger. It was an adventure, just for a few days, but there have been times when due to my mental state it was hard to be resourceful and ask for any kind of help. Sure, homelessness can tip you over the edge physically and emotionally. It's a mighty strange world we live in. Those who live in Communist and Muslim countries do not have to cope with the harshness of Christendom. Just because Jesus was crucified you don't have to torture your fellow citizen like we do.
Its very sad to hear about the all the deaths,in this day+age soceity should hang their heads in shame.
We see more+more people becoming homeless majority through no fault of their own,,its very easy to become homeless,,but very difficult to get bck into soceity..
Only time and money and compassion will solve this issuse.
And soon before more people die unecessary.