A rough guess (The Big Issue in the North, UK)
Ciara LeemingJune 25, 2006
Officially there are only seven homeless people sleeping rough in Manchester. Others claim the figure is closer to 400. The dispute is over the way rough sleepers are counted. And into that gap could fall many homeless people in need of help.
Steve was aged 24 when he found himself homeless for the first time. Nine years on, he is still spending his nights in derelict buildings and squats around central Manchester.
It was his escalating drug habit that pushed him into sleeping rough back then. That same addiction has worsened during his time on the streets, which has been punctuated by periods in homeless shelters, prisons and on other people’s floors.
“I’m in between places at the moment,” he tells The Big Issue in the North when we catch up with him at Manchester city centre’s needle exchange.
“I generally sleep in squats with my friends. Last week we were in one which actually had running water, which was quite unusual.
“They aren’t nice places because everyone tends to inject there, and drop their needles. But it’s much better to spend the night there than outside or on my own. I’ve had bad experiences where I have been attacked, so now prefer to be with other people.”
Steve is one of the many rough sleepers who are all but invisible to the authorities. Cutting street homelessness was a priority for Tony Blair’s government when it won power in 1997. Local councils were encouraged to adopt a more proactive approach to prevention and monitoring, and under the Homeless Act 2002 were required to devise homelessness strategies. By then, the government was claiming to have reduced the number of rough sleepers by two-thirds. But, while most working in the field agree that some progress has been made, some accuse the government and local authorities of spinning the figures for political reasons.
This is the claim in a new report by drugs agency Lifeline, which found the number of rough sleepers in Manchester alone could top 400. A study of 100 clients of its city centre needle exchange revealed that 37 were roofless. That does not include those who were staying in hostels, refuges or bed and breakfasts. The researchers then used statistical analysis to calculate that between 230 and 401 of the agency’s 850 clients were likely to be sleeping rough.
Manchester City Council’s estimate for the same period – 2006 – was that seven people were street homeless, down from a high of 44 in 1999. The total for all 10 boroughs which make up Greater Manchester was put at just 14. Elsewhere in the north, Sheffield’s figure is 11, Liverpool’s is nine, Chester’s is six and Penrith’s is four. Scarborough and Preston counted three each. Just one person was recorded by counters in Leeds.
These official “snapshot” figures were calculated from the annual street counts local authorities are required to carry out, and form the basis of the government’s claims to have cut rough sleeping by almost 70 per cent. On one night every year – councils are free to set their own date – a team of officials and volunteers heads into urban areas and combs a number of streets, marking down anyone believed to be sleeping rough. From this year, all councils must have their counts independently verified by someone from the voluntary sector.
But Dr Russell Newcombe, who carried out the Lifeline research, believes the whole process is a waste of time. He says most roofless people, like Steve, spend their nights sheltering in abandoned properties. Only people who are “clearly bedded down” and on public land are counted by the officials, who are not allowed to enter buildings and only have the time to cover a limited area.
The result, in his view, is that the authorities are closing their eyes to some of the most vulnerable members of society. With no accurate data on the scale of the problem, services are compromised.
“Drug users and homeless people are in many ways a hidden population, and therefore it’s hard to estimate the true scale of the problem,” he says. “There are sophisticated techniques now being used in the drug field, which are working well. Yet with rough sleeping, the government simply sends a team of people out to look in public places for a few hours on one night a year. The whole thing is ridiculous.
“Most homeless people sleep in derelict buildings anyway. Those who are outside and hear someone coming will stand up so they can’t get attacked. And many don’t sleep at night anyway – especially those who are using stimulant drugs like crack.
“The count teams are advised to stay away from anywhere they feel to be risky – but it’s exactly those places where homeless people are most likely to be. Every aspect of the guidelines is a way of not counting. In fact I’m amazed the figures contain anyone at all.
“It’s almost a method for making people invisible. I would never use such a useless method for my research. Everyone who works in this field knows it is worthless. Sadly, the result is that there are people out there who need services but who are being missed.”
In Scotland, where the Scottish Executive is in charge of housing policy, one-night street counts have been abandoned altogether. Cities now calculate their number of rough sleepers through contact with specialist agencies. About 300 people are thought to be rough sleeping in Glasgow, according to the Glasgow Homelessness Network – a partnership which includes the city council.
So far, few organisations except for Lifeline have called for the government to bite the bullet and do the same. Some, such as Shelter, believe they still have a use if combined with other methods. Chief executive Adam Sampson says: “Street counts only include people sleeping in city centre locations, whereas it's likely homeless people are moving to the edges of city centres, where they disappear off the radar.
“To grasp the true extent of street homelessness, other methods – such as surveys and multi-agency monitoring – must be used alongside street counts. Only with accurate figures can we understand the scale of the problem of street homelessness and help people find a place to stay or live.”
Many individual housing workers are reluctant to speak on the record about the issue. Most agencies active in the field are funded largely through public grants handed out through local authorities. With so many voluntary organisations chasing an ever-diminishing pot of cash, few are willing to risk being too controversial.
But some suggest privately that several factors could be at play when it comes to reporting street homelessness, including the regeneration of Britain’s cities, in which homeless drug users do not fit into the image of shiny, successful urban centres. Others fear under-estimating the scale of the problem could mean resources are diverted from rough sleepers and towards other groups, such as those living in temporary accommodation.
“If street counts are put forward as a snapshot and treated with caution then they can be useful. The danger is when they are presented as the true picture of homelessness and used for big claims about achievements,” says one North West agency worker.
“The current approach also makes it difficult to return a higher number. If last year’s count found four people but this year’s showed 15, that could be quite a scary thing for a local authority.
“If you have invested funds to sort out rough sleeping, and the figures have quadrupled, what does that say about the commissioning of services in your area? When people are pushed towards national targets, areas need to be getting rough sleeping down. If agencies aren’t being seen as effective, services could be commissioned elsewhere. So you can understand why there is a degree of nervousness there.”
Preston is one area where an increase in rough sleeping figures caused panic. Earlier this year, The Big Issue in the North revealed how outreach workers were made to feel they had failed after a second count showed the true picture to be worse.
“At the first count we found three, but as the work progressed we engaged with more people so when we recounted we found 12, which was actually a credit to the work we were doing,” said Barnardos worker Helen Watson at the time. But the way the government saw it was: ‘Panic! What’s going on in Preston? They’ve bucked the national trend.’
“So then we ended up getting descended upon by loads of people from the government, saying that it was awful and that we had done a bad job. In the end we had to capitulate and do a third count which was more to the government’s liking.”
The manager of another homeless project tells how plans for an independent street count were shelved earlier this year, as the local authority was “edgy” about the idea. The woman, who asked for her organisation not to be identified after talking to her boss, says: “Our council didn’t want us to come out directly and contradict their official figures, in case it affected the money they received from central government. From what I understand, they could lose funding if they don’t hit their targets.
“We are quite lucky – we aren’t funded by the local authority. But we want to work with them, rather than against them, so we agreed to do our research differently.
“The whole thing is so political. It’s a ridiculous situation that everyone’s chasing the same money yet there are still so many people not receiving the services they need.”
Manchester’s executive member for neighbourhood services, Cllr Eddy Newman, says the city has an excellent record of funding and working with agencies which work to reduce street homelessness, and denies snapshot counts are given more weight than they deserve. But he rejects the possibility that the Lifeline research could be correct.
“Our annual head count of rough sleepers, carried out in line with methodology devised by central government and homelessness agencies, is used to monitor the extent of rough sleeping in the city,” he says. “It is a snapshot and allows us to monitor any changes in the numbers and allows us to adapt our service accordingly.
“We have never claimed that the numbers of rough sleepers found on the head count – which was seven last time – represents the total number in the city. However, we would refute absolutely any research that suggested that the numbers of people rough sleeping in the city is or could be anywhere near 400.”
A Department for Communities and Local Government spokeswoman added: "We’ve made huge progress cutting rough sleeping but a lot of people are still facing serious housing pressures. Street counts provide a useful snapshot of the numbers of people sleeping rough on a single night.
“The methodology was developed by government nine years ago in partnership with the voluntary sector. These figures do not take into account everyone who is facing homelessness or housing problems. But they are a useful way to capture changes in levels of rough sleeping as they have been calculated on a consistent basis over nine years across the country.”
By Ciara Leeming
Reprinted from The Big Issue on the North
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