Tag Archives: rough

Coronavirus: Hotel housing for rough sleepers – but how do B&B users self-isolate?

Endangered: People who sleep on the streets are more likely to catch coronavirus, and more likely to have respiratory conditions that make them vulnerable to serious harm if they do catch it.

This may strike fools as foolish but the wise will understand.

People who live on the streets are as likely to catch the coronavirus as anybody – more so, as they have no way of isolating themselves and the virus can be airborne.

They are more likely to have underlying health conditions including respiratory diseases, which could make the effect of coronavirus on them far more serious.

And if they remain on the streets, they are equally likely to transmit the virus to many more people.

Soup kitchens and day centres have been closing with little or no warning.

So the Mayor of London’s office is to be applauded for booking rooms with the Intercontinental Hotels Group to ensure that homeless people have space to self-isolate.

The Big Issue has taken its vendors off the streets; supporters will be asked to provide funding online for the duration of the crisis.

But there are concerns over families who have been placed in temporary accommodation like bed & breakfast establishments by councils that could not find permanent homes for them.

That’s a fault of Tory governments, of course; council houses have been sold off without enough cash being provided for replacements to be built.

And Tory policies are likely to have put people in need of accommodation in the first place – because of the Bedroom Tax or wage depression, or other policies that clamp down on the vulnerable.

So again we see that Tory short-sightedness has endangered people.

Source: Coronavirus UK: Rough sleepers will be housed in central London hotels | Metro News

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Do Tory voters even realise they voted to make kids sleep in bins – and risk dying in the crusher?

Sleeping in bins: This young woman was found in a bin in December 2018.

A refuse collector in North Wales found two children sleeping in a wheelie bin whose contents he was about to consign to the crusher.

Think about that: this man would have ended two young lives without even realising they were there.

They – and he – were lucky; according to the Health and Safety Executive, seven people have been killed in the last five years – because they were sleeping in bins.

It’s what our votes have condoned; under the Conservatives, homelessness has skyrocketed.

And their figures on the number of people sleeping rough have been found to be seriously inaccurate, recording only one-fifth of the real number.

The statistic is produced by taking a “snapshot” of the number of people found sleeping on the streets on a particular night of the year – usually in the autumn.

One is moved to ask whether those carrying out the count thought to look in the bins.

Source: Two kids found asleep in wheelie bin by stunned worker about to put it in crusher – Mirror Online

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Official government rough sleeping estimate found to be only a fraction of the real figure

Tory figures on rough sleeping total less than 20 per cent – one fifth – of the actual number, according to research. They have been lying to us.

Even if this is an honest mistake, it shows us that the Conservative government is incompetent.

The Tories have been using a “snapshot” which shows the number of people found to be sleeping rough over a particular night. The latest figure to be reached by this method found 4,677 people, in 2018.

But a Freedom of Information request asking local authorities how many rough sleepers they had on their books found that the total was 28,000 – more than five times as many.

The Tories fix their targets on eliminating rough sleeping – and set their budgets for that purpose – on the basis of the smaller figure.

This means they cannot hope to solve the problem of rough sleeping, using their current methods.

It also means they’ve been selling us a pup – putting forward a falsehood that we are asked to believe in order to feel that genuine progress is being made. It isn’t.

The New Labour government of 1997-2010 actually did cut homelessness, by more than half.

But since David Cameron, Theresa May and now Boris Johnson took over, homelessness has skyrocketed.

And now we know they have been hiding the true extent of it from us.

Amazingly, the Conservatives are sticking by their figures, saying they are “confident our independently verified snapshot provides a good estimate of the numbers of people sleeping rough on a given night”.

Labour has asked the UK Statistics Authority to investigate the accuracy of the Tory statistics.

Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said, “The Conservatives can’t begin to fix the problem when they won’t admit the scale of it.”

That is the fact of the matter. And how many other statistical lies are the Tories foisting on us?

Source: Official government statistics grossly underestimate England’s rough sleeping crisis, new figures show – Welfare Weekly

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What does Chris ‘people aren’t lying dead in the streets’ Skidmore have to say now?

Chris Skidmore: He once said austerity wasn’t so bad because people weren’t dying in the streets. Now they are, and he is conspicuous by his silence.

The Conservative Party’s vice-chairman responsible for policy once said his party’s austerity cuts were not as bad as had been claimed because people were not “lying dead in the streets”. Now that people his party forced onto the streets have started to die, what does Chris Skidmore have to say?

Mr Skidmore, co-author of the Tory screed Britannia Unchained, which infamously claimed that British people were among the “worst idlers in the world”, has been challenged over his claim after the death of homeless Gyula Remes, who had been sleeping rough on the street just metres outside the Houses of Parliament. Mr Remes was a kitchen assistant at Charing Cross Station but was still forced to sleep rough.

He is the MP for Kingswood, which borders Bristol where a survey to count the number of dead homeless people is currently being carried out.

It is a good question, and one that should be put to Mr Skidmore at once. We need to hear his answer – especially as he is now responsible for Conservative Party policy. As Tory policies on homelessness have failed, how does he propose to prevent any more deaths?

That question was put to Housing Secretary James Brokenshire by Shadow Housing Minister Melanie Onn before Parliament went into recess for the Christmas period:

Mr Brokenshire passed the buck, saying it was the responsibility of Westminster City Council to see that “lessons are learned and applied”. We’ve all heard that line about lessons being learned before, of course.

He did say that Office of National Statistics figures show 597 homeless people died in 2017 – an increase on the previous figure of 449. While Mr Brokenshire said his government was “focused and resolute in our commitment to make rough sleeping a thing of the past”, the facts show that it isn’t doing enough.

Meanwhile, Sky News editor-at-large Adam Boulton seems to think he has the answer to the problem of people dying outside Parliament: Move them on.

https://twitter.com/RickBlaine123/status/1076065207468855297

Out of sight, out of mind, is it? Charming.

Oh, and while people are dying on the streets in the fifth-richest country on the planet, its prime minister has been visiting an exclusive shop where a handbag could cost more than many houses.

So much for “compassionate Conservatism” on her watch!

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Homelessness has increased massively under the Tories – AFTER 449 rough sleepers died in a single year

This is a shocking indication of the Conservative government’s real policy towards the homeless.

Last year, I quoted a report that homelessness had increased by 134 per cent since the general election in 2010. Today, that figure stands at 169 per cent. That is an enormous increase.

Worse still, after the Conservatives announced that they were going to end homelessness by 2027, we have discovered that 449 rough sleepers died within a single year.

That’s compared with 300 deaths over five years, between 2013 and April this year.

I have said the real Tory policy isn’t to end homelessness by getting rough sleepers into homes and jobs; the plan is to kill these people off. By that standard, I imagine the Tories think 449 deaths is a good start.

Anyone with the slightest speck of decency about them would consider it an abomination against some of the most vulnerable people of the United Kingdom.

Labour has made a video clip to hammer the facts home:

And some of our favourite campaigners made it personal, pointing out that people like Theresa May (for example) have not been honest with us:

The figures should make it perfectly clear that there is no way the Conservatives will ever make life better for people who have been reduced to living rough on the streets.

And let’s be clear on this: Rough sleepers aren’t “scroungers”. They aren’t “lazy”. They haven’t chosen to live that way, either.

The figures don’t lie.

They became homeless because the Tory government wanted them to be. And now they are dying because the Tory government wants them to die.

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Deaths of nearly 500 homeless people in a year is no accident – it seems to be Tory policy

I wrote it before and no doubt I’ll write it again: Conservative policy is for homelessness to end after all the homeless people are dead.

Recent estimates have suggested there are around 4-5,000 people sleeping rough on our streets, and the Tories pledged in 2017 to end homelessness in 10 years.

As far as they are concerned, nearly 500 deaths constitute a good start – especially when you consider that the number of deaths recorded in the five years between 2013 and April this year were just 300.

And you’ll notice there have been no headlines about the number of rough sleepers the Tories have got back into homes and good jobs.

At least 449 people died while being homeless across the UK in the last year, a shocking investigation has revealed.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, in partnership with Channel 4 News, has found a former soldier, a physicist and a travelling musician were among those who lost their lives.

Violence, drug overdoses and suicide were identified as some of the reasons why they died.

Among the tragic findings, one man’s body showed signs of prolonged starvation. In one week alone, 14 people died.

There is no official figure for the number of people who die on the streets, though a series of reports suggest homelessness is rising.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed it will now produce its own estimates on homeless deaths.

Source: At Least 449 Homeless People Died Last Year, Bureau of Investigative Journalism And Channel 4 News Reveals

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How the Tories solve homelessness: Rough sleeper found dead in Paisley

Police on the scene in Incle Street, Paisley.

“It is simply shameful and unacceptable that this is happening in 21st century Scotland.”

The tragic death of a rough sleeper in the heart of Paisley has sparked calls for new action on homelessness in the town.

Police say the body of a man, who has not been named, was found on the corner of Gauze Street and Incle Street.

The grim discovery – just yards from Renfrewshire Council’s headquarters and Paisley Town Hall – has led to questions from politicians and charities.

Source: Rough sleeper found dead in the heart of Paisley – Daily Record

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Teenage group set homeless man on fire – for fun

The scene of the crime.

This is the flipside of the story published on This Site last weekend, in which a woman set herself alight in a local government housing office.

That story was horrifying enough, as it was about a person who deliberately set herself alight, for reasons that may never be clarified, considering the lack of interest shown by the news media.

This one is equally horrifying, if not more so. It indicates that irresponsible kids have been emboldened to believe they can burn property belonging to someone else, and even flirt with murder, with impunity.

It is possible to suggest that government policy is responsible for the shameful behaviour of this gang of parasites; not only have the Tories encouraged an atmosphere in which the homeless are considered to be less-than-human – while implementing cuts that mean rough sleeping has increased by 169 per cent, but they have also reduced police numbers beyond the point at which preventative law enforcement is feasible.

So we end up with a situation in which many people reading the following story will say to themselves, “Who cares if the police couldn’t do anything? It was only some homeless bum.”

Riiiight. But success at eluding capture means these people will become bolder. What will you do when they walk into your home and start making a mess of it – and you?

A group of teenagers are being sought after by police after a homeless man was set on fire in Northampton.

The 49-year-old rough sleeper, believed to have early onset dementia, was bedded down in a bus shelter when they struck.

Bianca Todd, his niece-in-law, was reportedly driving past the shelter when she noticed a number of people standing near him. She got out of the car and saw flames rising from the bottom of his sleeping bag.

Ms Todd said that another rough sleeper told her the teenagers were responsible, although this has not been confirmed by police.

“I went to go and put it out but he was fast asleep, he didn’t realise he was on fire,” she told the Northampton Chronicle. “If his friend hadn’t have spotted him, he would be dead.”

Source: Homeless man with dementia set on fire ‘by group of teenagers’ in Northampton | The Independent

Tory social policy at work: Head teachers seek charity help for families sleeping by bins

East London headteacher Lorna Jackson says that by working with the charity SHS her school has helped more than 100 families with basic needs such as food

So much of the Conservative master-plan for the general public is visible here:

They want to disrupt the education of children from poor families, so they have no opportunity to eclipse the academic abilities of the rich (no matter how stupid those rich kids may be – think Boris Johnson).

They want to deprive poor families – even those earning a full-time wage – from the ability to own their own home, or even to rent one if possible.

They want to make sure there is no way for such people to claw their way back out of the hole that has been dug for them by the Tory government.

Result: Families are sleeping on the streets, by dustbins.

And then the Tories have the sheer cheek to lie to us that the number of people sleeping rough is decreasing.

It was a sight Lorna Jackson, a London headteacher, had never expected to see: two pupils at her primary school sleeping behind bins at the station with their parents. “Mum, dad and the two little children were all sleeping on a mattress they’d found. The family had been evicted and the children had very little to eat.”

Jackson’s school, Maryland primary in Stratford, is in a deprived area of east London. As well as suffering homelessness, her pupils are regularly victims of domestic violence. “I realised that my role had changed. Unless I addressed our children’s wellbeing, their education was not going to have impact at all.”

Source: Headteachers turn to charities as families sleep by bins | Education | The Guardian

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The facts on rough sleeping are against the Tories – so they lie

Mapped out: This graph shows the increase in the number of rough sleepers in the UK since the Conservatives took office.

The Conservatives have been caught lying about the number of people sleeping rough in the UK.

They said fewer people were sleeping rough now than when Labour left office in 2010; in fact there has been a 169 per cent increase.

The Tories have a flagship policy to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027, and have announced an increase in funding of £100 million to achieve this aim.

… Except none of this is new money. Half had already been committed to the policy, and the rest had been “reprioritised” from other existing budgets.

The Conservative government is doing what it always does – trying to fool you that the poor are better-off than the evidence shows. Meanwhile, their policies continue to ruin lives across the UK.

[Communities Secretary James Brokenshire’s Parliamentary Private Secretary falsely claimed on the BBC’s Westminster Hour that] the number of rough sleepers is now lower than it was when the Tories came to power.

“That number is by the way lower than it was when the last labour government left office in 2010,” he said.

He admitted the figure had gone up in the last year, but claimed: “In recent years it’s been rising but it’s still lower than it was when Labour left office.”

This is untrue.

According to government figures, the number of people sleeping rough was estimated at around 1,768.

The most recent estimate for 2017 was 4,751 – a total estimated increase of 169% since the Tories came to power.

Source: Tory minister admits none of £100 million ‘boost’ for rough sleeping is new money – Mirror Online

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