A recent report that looked at the number of rough sleepers in England revealed a bleak portrait of this too-often overlooked side of British society. In many ways, it seems to be the national "shame" that many people would rather turn their eyes away from on the street.
A bleak picture
In general, the numbers of rough sleepers in the country are rising everywhere, and in some places at an alarming (and thus highly-visible) rate. A more detailed look at the national spread of rough sleeping in the country can tell us which towns and cities, and which parts of the country, have the highest proportionate numbers. This might also tell us something about the nature of those areas and what is happening beneath the surface.
London's levels of rough sleeping have been well-documented, so I'd like to focus on the areas of the UK outside of the capital. This is not to downplay the bleak reality that thousands of rough sleepers have in London; I simply want this article to focus on the rest of the UK (although what's happening in London may well be linked to what's also happening outside of it).
In England, the major cities that have the highest numbers of rough sleepers relative to their size are Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester. Birmingham also has at least several dozen rough sleepers, though given the sprawling size of the city (as the second biggest in England), the numbers are slightly lower than the even higher levels seen in the first three cities listed, that have markedly smaller populations compared to Birmingham (such as the shocking rates seen in Nottingham in particular).
Outside of the major conurbations, rough sleeping has rocketed in a swathe of towns and small cities across England, in the South in particular, and this is the most visible illustration of the problem. The interactive graphic in the BBC link highlighted at the top shows a picture of rough sleeping now reaching epidemic proportions in the south-east (i.e. surrounding the wider London conurbation) and along south coast of England.
Along the south coast towns, there are a string of places such as Hastings, Eastbourne, Brighton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth and even Weymouth(!) and Exeter that all are experiencing extremely high levels of rough sleeping.
Meanwhile, there are a whole host of towns in the wider South-East (within commuter distance of London) that have the same, shocking numbers of rough sleepers: going clockwise from the Thames estuary, places like Southend, Maidstone, Canterbury, Reading, Slough, Swindon, and Oxford, Luton and Bedford all have extremely high numbers of rough sleepers relative to their size. Even Cambridge. Of those, Bedford, Luton and Southend stand out as having the highest propertions of all, given these are only medium-sized towns. What makes this all the more shocking is that the numbers of rough sleepers in these smaller Southern towns are much higher than even in much larger cities elsewhere in the UK. For instance, there are far more rough sleepers in Bedford than there are in Newcastle. Why this might be the case will be looked at later.
There are some details that appear to defy easy explanation, at least to the layman. For some reason, Lincoln also has an especially-large rough sleeper population, given the small size of the city. On the other hand, there are parts of England like the North-East whose rough sleeper numbers, while they have certainly seen a marked rise in recent times, seem fairly modest compared to the disproportionately much larger numbers in the the towns in the South. This seems somehow anomalous (though of course in a positive way), especially given the long-term problems within unemployment and poverty that that North-east has suffered.
Like in all the UK, numbers in Wales and Scotland have increased markedly, but compared to Wales and Scotland, England seems to have a disproportionately-bigger problem with rough sleeping, especially in the South. The question is: why?
Sinking to the bottom
Traditionally, the reasons for rough sleeping, at least at an individual level, can be many, but the most common ones seem to be problems with mental health, drug and alcohol dependency. However, as any expert would tell you, the last two reasons mentioned are usually tied with the first: mental health.
People who become drug and/or alcohol dependent can reach this state for a variety of reasons, but again, experts will tell you that they often reach that state through issues of family breakdown (often at a young age), and all the horrid side-effects that come with that. Put another way, these are people who have resorted to drink or drugs - "self-medication" - as the way to escape their real-life nightmare. The same is true in any "sink estate" around the country; it's simply that those who become rough sleepers are in an even worse state of affairs, where they feel they have nowhere to go and so decide to cut themselves off from normal society.
So we can say with some certainty that those who "self medicate" are people who use drink or drugs to deal with mental health issues of one form or another. Also, another reason that many of these refuse to stay in hostels is that they "cut themselves off" in order to break their dependency. As some hostels can be riven with other "dependent" homeless with a ready supply of drink or drugs, some rough sleepers fall into a cycle of refusing beds in these institutions precisely because they don't want to fall back into the dependency cycle. Whether or not this rationale makes sense, or works, is another matter.
Apart from the "traditional" reasons for homelessness (and rough sleeping), an increasingly-common reason these days is simply being evicted by their landlord due to financial hardship. And this is not because of financial mismanagement, but simply being unable to make the money coming in (from work or welfare support) pay for everything. These people may well not have mental health issues at all, and have become rough sleepers for other reasons - shame (at feeling the need to admit their own sense of "failure" to family and peers); perseverance (feeling that they are just experiencing a "temporary setback" which will soon be overcome); or simply lack of other options (no close family network or friends to fall back on).
A stripped-down state
But for rough sleepers who are there for whatever reason, the buck stops with the government, and the spike in rough sleeping can be firmly laid at the government's door, for a number of reasons.
The traditional tendency for rough sleeping to be something associated with those with mental health problems goes back to the government's failure on dealing with mental health. This has been a problem for decades - exacerbated with Thatcher's "care in the community" - but has got far worse since the government began its cutbacks to mental health services across the board under David Cameron. Now local authorities no longer have the funding for local care of those with mental health issues, leaving them to fend for themselves. It's not surprising that the result is a spike in homelessness, for all the reasons mentioned earlier.
The government's "reforms" to welfare provision have impacted the money received by those with mental health issues (see above), creating financial insecurity where before there was at least some kind of safety net. Now these people are finding they are slipping though the net, and left to fend for themselves. From the rough sleeping figures, we know where that can lead.
Likewise, other welfare reforms, such as Universal Credit, are causing a surge in financial insecurity, not only for those who are the most vulnerable in society, but those who are also in work. This insecurity is what is feeding the rise in evictions, and thus rough sleeping.
Lastly, the government's "light touch" attitude to regulation has meant that the nature of work and housing has become more insecure. With local government budgets slashed, there is not enough money for local councils to enforce the regulations on employers and landlords that do exist; meanwhile, the government is doing little to encourage employers and landlords to change their often exploitative behaviour. All this means that there is added financial pressure on workers and tenants, making it all the more likely that they are just one "crisis" away from losing their job and/or eviction.
This kind of environment also makes it more likely that people will develop mental health issues and/or a dependency on drink or drugs, and into the downward spiral that too easily leads to rough sleeping by the other route.
An "English dystopia"?
It is this environment of exploitation and government indifference that is causing the rise in rough sleeping.
One final issue worth exploring is looking for an explanation to the geographical spread of rough sleeping in England. One thing that hits us, from a sociological point of view, about where rough sleeping is proportionately the highest, is the type of towns they are. The three that seem to have the highest proportions - Luton, Bedford and Southend - are towns that have done badly since the "de-industrialisation" of thirty years ago and are in a part of the country with a high rate of inequality. In my view, it is both these factors (poverty and inequality) that have contributed, and both working in tandem that exacerbate the problem. These are places that feel ignored, exploited and cheated by the centre, and are politically ripe ground for extremism.
As homelessness is seemingly a result of mental health and/or economic factors (that cause a "collapse" in the person's mental and economic stability; see also "crime"), it would seem logical that it is the towns and cities in the country with people most subjected to these factors that are most likely to have high rates of rough sleeping.
The combination of the two factors above (poverty matched with inequality) go some way to explaining why London, the wider South-east and the South coast have the highest rates of rough sleeping. Places like the North-east may have smaller proportions because the levels of inequality are less than in the South-east, even if the rate of poverty is more. Although the picture is complex, it is possible that the social bonds in places like the North-east are stronger due to lower levels of inequality, and this may account somewhat for the differences in the rates of rough sleeping.
Apart from the sociological factors, and how much a local council's social services budget has been cut, there is also the sad truth that some of these towns in the South are within commuter distance to and from London, and therefore it is relatively inexpensive for overwhelmed London councils to simply "export" these homeless to more far-flung, relatively isolated, towns.
That way, it becomes someone else's problem, and another aspect of the "English dystopia" that parts of the country have come to resemble under Theresa May.
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