‘Have rough sleepers become collateral damage?’

Philip Carmelo Luce was thought to be 69 when he died. His badly decomposed remains were found in May within an abandoned building in a forested area near Abbots Leigh Cricket Club close to Leigh Woods. His identity was discovered using DNA and the coroner ruled his death as “unexplained”.

Collateral damage is a term typically used in a war situation, but I think it’s fitting to describe the current state of rough sleepers and their place in modern society.

In February, 41-year-old Adam Zajac was found unresponsive outside Debenhams in Broadmead. He had suffered serious injuries, including head injuries, and died of acute alcohol toxicity after paramedics were unable to revive him.

Also in February, Portuguese-born Marcos Amaral Gourgel, 35, was found dead in Westminster tube station, just a few steps from the underground entrance to the Houses of Parliament. He was one of four rough sleepers believed to have died in London in only the first six weeks of this year.

The old stereotype of a rough sleeper is no longer valid.

I’m not saying that no rough sleeper has an addiction but you’ve got to think, if I had nothing and I had to sit on a slab all day while endless people walk past, why wouldn’t I turn to drugs to relieve pain?

Besides this, it is women who are becoming the continued victims of homelessness. Research by Crisis, the homelessness charity, found 58 per cent of women sleeping rough had been intimidated or threatened with violence and force in the past 12 months compared to 42 per cent of men.

The government refuted the idea that it’s turning a blind eye and some changes have come into action.

In April, the Homelessness Reduction Act came into force with the hope of getting more people off the street and into the appropriate services, with councils in England now having a legal duty to assist all eligible homeless citizens.

The Big Issue founder John Bird welcomed the new Act, saying it could “present a bit of a sea change” in tackling the homelessness crisis.

The research is clear and it clearly demonstrates shows that homelessness literally kills.

The only way to tackle this is to provide more affordable housing to the mass market, more support to the service providing third party support to people sleeping rough and more emphasis on providing sustainable aftercare for the process of supporting people rebuild their lives.

Local authorities and other homelessness services such as charities need to understand the needs of the people they are helping to ensure that help and accommodation is not only suitable to that person but also sustainable.

It remains a shocking fact that there is no right to shelter in England but hopefully with this new legislation the added pressure on local authorities to have a duty of care to anybody who is homeless may just be the starting point in the fight to securing housing for all.

Isabella Cross works in the charity sector in Bristol, specialising in social housing among those suffering with mental health issues