Monday 13 August 2018

The Government and Homelessness

With regard to today's much-trumpeted announcement that the government intends to eradicate street homelessness by 2027, those of us with long memories will recall how things were very different when the government once had in place quite a spohisticated network of services for this group. They were the DHSS 'spikes', direct descendents of the dreaded Victorian Workhouse, but swept away by political correctness in the 1980's. This reprint from the Sunday Times September 15th 1985:-   

Last days of the spike


By the time George Orwell was writing about homelessness in London, “the spike” had become the common name for a shelter of last resort. The original, and by far the biggest, was the great Victorian Institution in Camberwell, which this week closes after more than a century of service. Brian Deer looks back over its history.

When in 1850 the first steam engines came chugging through south London on the new Chatham and Dover Railway, the noise, the grime and the curiosity were all too much for the nuns of Nazareth House. Confronted with the disturbance of the industrial revolution, they packed their bibles, sold their land, and on the site of their convent up sprang perhaps Britain’s greatest single landmark of Christian charity.

The site was first refurbished as the Camberwell workhouse, taking whole families from the newly-emerging urban underclass of homeless, jobless poor. The demand was overwhelming and soon the Guardians of Camberwell erected two vast grey-brick buildings either side of the nuns’ simple chapel. And so was born the place where a million men have slept, and which to its users has ever since been simply known as The Spike.

Nobody is certain about the origins of the nickname. One view is that the spike in question was the means by which those too drunk to stand were held in an upright posture. Another is that it was the implement with which residents broke rocks for their keep. But whatever the origin of the label, it became known throughout Britain and Ireland as the place where you could always get a bed for the night and not have too much bother.

On a winter night in its heyday, some 15 years ago, the Spike, now the Department of Health and Social Security’s Camberwell Resettlement Unit, packed in 1,100 bedraggled men. Each had a narrow bunkspace, a thin mattress and a blanket. Most were chronically alcoholic, many had fleas or lice, and considerably more than a handful would wet their bed at night.

They slept in eight noisy, dirty and often dangerous dormitories, each over 30 yards long, in two hospital-like wings. One wing housed the long-stay guests, or “residents”, who were allowed to remain all day on the premises if they performed some useful chore. The other was for “casuals”, who each afternoon lined up outside the gates to register, shower and eat.

Even 10 years ago, Dr John Hewetson, Camberwell’s medical officer, recorded an alarming level of sickness among the unit’s users. Nearly half had a history of mental illness. 34% were handicapped, 14% suffered from epilepsy and 13% had tuberculosis. “Schizophrenics, demented old men, the brain-damaged, rigid abrasive characters are all accepted at Camberwell,” Hewetson noted.

In the past decade, the numbers admitted to the unit have been run down, and this week the few who remain will be bussed away to psychiatric hospitals and the Spike will finally close. Smaller hostels are to take the strain of the homeless, and only the acrid smell of a century of filth recalls Camberwell’s easily-forgettable past.

The closure is part of a national plan to shut 24 resettlement units in major cities and hand over their functions to local government and voluntary bodies. “This provision, which is largely a relic of the poor law workhouses, has come to seem increasingly anomalous,” Tony Newton, the minister for social security, told parliament earlier this year.

From Newton’s standpoint, the closures of the units will be happy events – lifting the dead hand of the DHSS bureaucrats from the department’s only direct services for the homeless. There is no rationale for government-run centres that have no links with the local community.

But there has been a sadness at the Spike in recent weeks that may seem at first hard to comprehend. “This is the best place of them all. I don’t want to leave here,” explains Albert Mills, aged 70, who has stalked the unit’s corridors since 1972. “Nobody worries you here. You can do more or less what you want to.”

Like nearly all the Spike’s residents, Mills has given smaller hostels a try, attempted life in lodgings and spent years living rough. Today, he sits aimlessly watching daytime television and remembering his youthful years. “I was never any good on my own,” he concludes. “I’d just be pissed all the time.”

The paradox of the Spike is that, for all its poor conditions, people like Mills much prefer the life in a big institution and will find it hard to struggle-on elsewhere. Before its run-down, 90% of those resettled by Camberwell were back within six months and, for them, pools of urine in the dormitories are of less importance than the right to be left alone.

“In the smaller hostels they are seen more and probably kept on their toes a bit more than they are at Camberwell; and some of them don’t like that,” says Frank Woodhead, who as the Spike’s current manager is supervising its closure. “It’s just their way of living, you see. If they’ve been wandering round the country for years, it doesn’t go down very well.”

The impeccable Victorian structure stands all but silent now, the gates finally closed on the destitute men who have walked from all over England to the shelter of Camberwell. This weekend, a few late stragglers will appear – to be sent on somewhere else. And even those who are found new homes find it hard to stay away. They come wandering back along the railway track for a last goodbye to the Spike.

--oo00oo--

Hansard 29th October 1979

Mr. Kilroy-Silk

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give the name, location and capacity of the reception and resettlement centres administered by the Supplementary Benefits Commission for homeless single (a) men and (b) women; if he considers the number of places to be sufficient; and what steps he is taking to increase the number.


Provincial

Alvaston Derby 104
Brighton Sussex 38
Crown Quay Lodge Sittingbourne, Kent 76
Fazakerley Liverpool 61
Glasgow Bishopbriggs, Glasgow 63
Leeds Leeds 96
Leicester Wigston, Leicester 100
Newbury Berkshire 68
Plawsworth Chester-le-Street, Co. Durham 112
Southampton Southampton 80
South Wales Bridgend, Mid-Glamorgan 64
Walkden Worsley, Manchester 84
West Midlands Stourbridge, Worcestershire 123
Winterbourne Bristol 112
Woodhouse Sheffield 96

London 

Camberwell Peckham, SE15 550
Camden Birkenhead Street, WC1 35*
Cedars Lodge Cedars Road, SW4 30* 70
Bridge House Kingsdown Close, W10 120
Hither Green Ennersdale Road, SE13 150
Pound Lodge Pound Lane, NW10 80
Lancelot Andrewes House Great Guildford Street, Southwark, SE1 60
West End House Dean Street, Soho, W1 80

Total 2,452  
*women

8 comments:

  1. There's already mention today of opening up disused warehouses to accommodate rough sleepers. Guess it's not a great leap from warehouse to workhouse.
    Apart from the Tories policies that are actively promoting rough sleeping and poverty, bedroom tax, benefit sanctions and not making direct payments of benefits to landlords, I fear any assistance offered to rough sleepers will be contritionl, and allow the private sector to exploit the situation.
    That so many people are rough sleeping today is a shame on our government, but I think they see it as a nuisance not a social problem.
    I read the following article today, it's a long read, but gives a flavour of just what the state really thinks of those that sleep rough.

    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/the-deaths-they-dont-count-15021204

    'Getafix

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    1. What the mayor’s office says

      Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester, Bev Hughes said: “Homelessness has become a humanitarian crisis in this country. The effects of rough sleeping on people’s physical and mental health are often catastrophic and that is why Greater Manchester has led the way on creating a joined-up approach with the public, private, faith and voluntary sectors to end the need for rough sleeping in our city-region.

      “To tackle homelessness we must understand the scale of the problem. Greater Manchester recognises that to have a situation where we do not know how many rough sleepers have died on our streets is simply not acceptable and cannot continue.

      “Discussions with government are ongoing but we are also bringing together all of our public services next month to make real progress on this issue.

      “Together we will ensure there is a bed every night for every rough sleeper in our city region - nobody should ever die on the streets of Greater Manchester.”

      What the council says

      Councillor Bev Craig, executive member for Adults Health and Wellbeing said: “We record the deaths of homeless people who we have been officially involved with and we have recently changed our practice to start recording any rough sleeper death that has come to our attention through our own work or through partner agencies.

      “However, we know that this isn’t a comprehensive picture because there is no obligation for other agencies or organisations to report any known deaths to the council or other partners. “We are looking to put in place a process to ensure that this information will be collated through the Manchester Safeguarding Board.”

      “Two deaths, earlier this year, were referred to Adult Safeguarding but a Safeguarding Adult Review has not been deemed appropriate in either case.”

      What the police say

      Superintendent Chris Hill of GMP’s City of Manchester Team said: “In Greater Manchester we have a large homeless community, and on occasions have to investigate the deaths of people who have been living on the streets, or who have no fixed abode.

      “Sadly, many homeless people have serious health issues, they are in and out of hospital and many don’t live a healthy lifestyle. This means that tragically we see more deaths than we would like in this community.

      “GMP officers and staff will investigate every sudden death that is reported to us, not just those who are homeless. The investigations may be very straightforward and the death easily explained, or it may take some time to establish the exact circumstances surrounding a death.

      “Once it has been established that a death is not suspicious a file will be passed on to HM Coroner who from that point directs any further investigation and procedures. HM Coroner may also request further investigation by GMP in some circumstances.

      “Figures for the number of homeless people who die are not collected by Greater Manchester Police, their deaths form part of the figures for all non-suspicious deaths that we investigate.

      “Should there be cause for concern that a venue or area is the location for more deaths than is normal or that can be explained, then an investigation would be launched with our partners and other agencies to ensure all is being done to safeguard those who live there.

      “We will continue to work with our partners and homeless charities to ensure as many people as possible access treatment and safe housing to help them live healthier lifestyles and hopefully prevent unnecessary deaths.

      “We are open to learning new and better ways or recording statistics and should it be necessary to begin recording deaths in different ways we will do our best to ensure all that can be done is being done.”

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  2. I support efforts to tackle this problem. I couldn't help thinking to myself how BoJo would turn his wit and exuberant personality to commentating on the appearance of people who are hhomeless. Of course, he would not. No nett votes in homeless humour.

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    1. Speaking of the 'homeless', spare a thought for BoJo, the racist multi-millionaire squatter in a grace & favour Foreign Secretary's house paid for by us mugs, the taxpayer:

      "the former Cabinet minister seems to be in no rush himself when it comes to leaving the £20million official residence he has been living in rent free since he was appointed two years ago.

      And while he lingers in plush One Carlton Gardens, Central London, Johnson is pocketing tens of thousands of pounds renting out his four-storey Georgian home four miles away.

      That is on top of the £17,000 payoff he is in line for after quitting his role."

      Seems he finally moved out at the beginning of this month.

      Meanwhile his poor father also had to lose his home in London:

      "THE Government has spent an average of £1 million per house under a scheme to buy properties blighted by the HS2 line but not in its immediate shadow... One of those to successfully use the scheme was Boris Johnson’s father Stanley, 74, who sold his London home for £150,000 more than the original asking price under “Need to Sell”.

      He had needed to move to be closer to an elderly relative. However, other neighbours have been refused permission to move.

      The Government bought Mr Johnson’s grade II listed Nash house in Camden’s Park Village East for £4.4 million in March 2016."

      Damn, how their lives have been blighted by such rotten luck. Poor lambs.

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  3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/13/tories-homelessness-crisis-universal-credit

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    1. The government has a new policy on housing; rough sleeping is a national disgrace, and Theresa May has promised to eliminate it by 2027. In the Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, Boris Johnson is crusading against developers treating homeowners “like serfs”, making another back-of-a-fag-packet policy suggestion: cut “absurdly high” stamp duty. Because of course that is what’s freezing young people out of the housing market – it’s state interference, rather than stagnant wages failing to keep pace with rents and house prices in an ever-worsening expression of systemic inequality.

      Homelessness, though, is a sound and decent thing to concentrate on: the government thinks it a scandal, and so do we all. It wants to spend £100m on it, and that sounds like a lot. We were momentarily cast back to the politics of yore, where problems were identified and governments, imperfectly maybe, at least undertook to solve them. It was all going so swimmingly until James Brokenshire, the housing secretary, popped the hood: this was not new money. This was £50m that had already been committed to solving rough sleeping and £50m reallocated from elsewhere in the housing budget. Nothing has changed. As Theresa May might put it: these sums are merely being “focused and targeted”.

      This is not so much a new policy as some new noise. Meanwhile, Polly Neate, the chief executive of Shelter, talks of the underlying issues: a “dire shortage of social housing for people who can’t afford market rents”; cuts to housing benefit so that even working people can’t meet the lowest-available rent in their area; a dearth of protections for private renters; a failure to build. About 90,000 new homes are needed each year to meet the social housing demand. Last year, 5,000 were built. “You need houses to solve homelessness,” says Neate, simply.

      The announcement is worse than sleight of hand, juggling some numbers to amplify piecemeal measures. Homelessness is caused by policies: decisions on how many houses to build, and in which price range. Universal credit, sanctions, the child benefit cap – these are political decisions that have contributed to people being unable to afford their rent. Up to a third of universal credit claimants are having their payments deducted because they are in rent or council tax arrears. The government is acting like its own incompetent opposition, decrying a situation of its own making, offering solutions that are nowhere near the source of the crisis.

      Last week’s intervention on prisons followed the same pattern. The Ministry of Justice vowed to cut the prison population by keeping people with drug, alcohol or mental health problems out of jail. Again, it sounded good, and, again, it had nothing underpinning it, no extra money for those addiction services, nothing for mental health provision. Again, the crisis was caused in the first place by Conservative policies – in this case, spending cuts across the service, and the outsourcing of probation to community rehabilitation companies – an “untested and deeply unpopular privatisation process”, according to the probation officers’ union – and, again, the secretary of state, David Gauke, described his fresh, new solutions with no reference to his government’s decisive part in the problem.

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    2. The spectacle of the non-governing government is unsettling enough when it discusses no policies, when all its business is Brexit and backbiting. But when it shambles back on to the territory of running the country – wilfully impotent, rhetorically disconnected from cause and effect – the effect is jolting, like crossing a road in a foreign land and mistaking the passenger’s seat for the driver’s. Why are they staring listlessly out of a side window? Who’s driving the thing? Shouldn’t somebody intervene?

      In this context, Johnson’s ideas are more significant than their flimsiness suggests. The rate of stamp duty, the distributive effects of a change, how much it would cost – none of that matters: it is merely a signal. “I’m the kind of Conservative who cares about people like you, not those derelicts – I care about upstanding people who just need the government to get out of their way so they can prosper.” It is an attack on May’s announcement, but not its practical application; rather, the atmosphere she creates when she makes rough sleeping society’s problem. He’s gesturing at ideas that are themselves only gestures, an elaborate Tory semaphore that conveys nothing but hunger for power.

      Meanwhile, renters in the UK are spending £10bn a year more than they were in 2010. Away from these clownish mimes, millions of lives are worse for want of a government that meaningfully seeks to better them.

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  4. 168% increase in recorded homelessness since 2010. What happened in 2010?

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