Down on the streets

Being homeless is even tougher if you're also disabled. Sunil Peck investigates what is being done to help disabled people off the streets

Steve had been attacked by another homeless person a few days before I met him. He was punched and had his crutches kicked away in a dispute over £20.

Life on the streets is tough and Steve, who has thrombosis in his legs because he spent so many years injecting heroin into his groin, keeps himself to himself.

He is ten days into his second stint of living rough when I meet him and tells me he previously spent about two years on the streets. The pain in Steve’s legs has been getting worse and he has no access to a nurse to bathe and dress his infected ulcers. He has no address so he cannot register with a GP.

Steve is always cold – even though he wears three coats. “I only spoke to you so that you would buy me a cup of tea,” he says.

Some nights he dosses down among the bins behind the National Film Theatre on London’s South Bank.

On others he scales a ten-foot fence and climbs through a hostel window, where he crashes on his mate’s floor.

On Christmas Eve, he was admitted to a temporary hostel, usually the first step to permanent housing. After a few weeks, Steve expected to spend one or two years in what is known as a permanent hostel while he waited for a flat to become available.

But there was one permanent hostel in London where he didn’t want to stay because he had been bullied there, and this was the hostel they chose. He was given the choice of moving there or back onto the streets.

He opted for the streets. He can appeal, but says the outcome will take months.

“I want somewhere that I can call my home,” he says. “Not a room in a hostel, but if I have to go that way to get one, I will. Somewhere I can pay my electricity bill and council tax.”

Nicholas Pleace, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Housing Policy, says it is difficult to know how many homeless disabled people there are.

People with significant sensory and mobility impairments are usually picked up by the NHS or social services, but he adds: “Certain aspects of homelessness might be a disabling process. There is a lot of depression in the homeless population – you have not got a house, or money, and you are alienated.”

Duncan Shrubsole, director of policy and research at the homeless charity Crisis, believes that many disabled people do not get the help they need to avoid homelessness or escape it. “What is also clear, however, is that homeless people are disproportionately likely to have disability in the form of mental health problems. Around 30 to 50 per cent of single homeless people have mental health problems, including 12 to 26 per cent who have schizophrenia or other serious mental illness.”

It is not only rough-sleepers who are defined as homeless. The term can apply to those in poor or overcrowded accommodation, who have nowhere to site a boat or a caravan, or who are not rehoused by their council after leaving a psychiatric ward.

But a disabled person only qualifies for statutory help if they are both unintentionally homeless and in priority need, for example, because they are “vulnerable” due to their impairment.

The homeless charity Shelter says it is absolutely right that disabled people are seen as a priority. It is lobbying for an increase in investment in social housing to cut the number of people in temporary accommodation, which would help many disabled people.

Helen is resigned to spending the rest of her life as a homeless person. She is 53.

She was in and out of hospital when she was younger, and has been in and out of hostels for most of her adult life, including about seven years on the streets.

She blames a housing association she says breached a tenancy agreement and “slung her out”. She says all authorities are the same. “That’s the way it is,” she says.

Most of Helen’s teeth are missing and her voice is nearly drowned out by the noise of traffic and pedestrians. She has been subjected to a lot of violence. She ended up in accident and emergency a few days before I met her. “I got beaten. I don’t know what happened, I just woke up in hospital black and blue. If you accidentally bump into a person and you apologise to them, you just get insulted. They call you a slag, slut, whore, all sorts of things.”

Helen uses crutches and has epilepsy. “How can housing associations say they help homeless people, and then throw someone like me who is epileptic and disabled out onto the street?” Then she answers her own question: “If people want to wreck your life, they will. You are just a black sheep; they don’t have no respect for you.”

Helen strikes up conversations with passers-by and sleeps on benches and doorways at night; she likes McDonald’s because of its warm air vents.

She talks in a matter-of-fact way about sleeping rough in the winter and being covered in snow. “I don’t mind. It’s not scary. It’s a way of life,” she says.

A Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) spokeswoman says the number of disabled people who qualify for statutory help has been falling since 2004.

In 2002, the government introduced laws that force authorities to provide suitable accommodation for “vulnerable” disabled people who are unintentionally homeless: temporary accommodation must be provided until a long-term solution is found.

Since July 2003, all local housing authorities in England must have a strategy for tackling and preventing homelessness, including reducing homelessness amongst disabled people if this is a local issue. So far, the DCLG has given £300 million to local authorities to support homelessness prevention services, such as rent deposit schemes and mediation to resolve family and relationship breakdown.

In December, the government announced an extra £150 million in homelessness grants for councils and voluntary organisations over the next three years.

There is also the Supporting People programme, which helps disabled and older people with support needs live independently, with £8.7billion since 2003.

John Callaway, manager of the Two Saints day centre in Southampton, says that if someone who has been homeless for some time does want a route out, there are good support services available, both in Southampton and other UK cities.

He says 80 or 90 people drop in to his centre for a meal or shower every day. A significant number have impairments linked to drug or alcohol use, with 30 to 40 per cent of his clients having an impairment of some sort.

His staff can write referrals to hostels and offer assistance with benefit applications. There are also literacy and numeracy sessions and access to a GP and a community psychiatric nurse.

One of Callaway’s clients is Stuart, who tells me: “It’s brilliant, because you have got support in the daytime. You have got hot water, toilets, a bit of food, phone calls.”

Stuart spent 30 years living in sheds, caravans and hostels. He has depression and acquired a mobility impairment when he jumped off a falling ladder. Now 47, he is coming off heroin and says it is time for him to prove to friends and family he can hold down a flat and pay his own bills.

The centre’s staff have helped Stuart find a permanent hostel. “When I had nothing, these people helped me out. If I had a million quid, I would donate it to help other people in my situation to get through,” he says.

The government has certainly pumped millions into preventing disabled people becoming homeless, and figures suggest more homeless people are being rehoused. But what nobody knows is how many homeless disabled people do not apply for local authority support, or drift onto the streets because local authorities do not consider them vulnerable enough to rehouse.

If a disabled person does end up living rough, there are outreach workers, day centres and hostels that can point them towards healthcare, mental health support, drug and alcohol services and permanent accommodation.

Investment in prevention and support is one thing, but how do you help the hardest-to-reach disabled people? Maybe in the same way that prisoners become used to living behind bars, some homeless people become “institutionalised” by living on the streets. The question then becomes: how do you persuade people like Helen and Steve to take the help that society offers?