Dead dogs are treated better than dead homeless people. It’s a disgrace
Tamsen Courtenay, Author of Four Feet Under (Unbound)/The Guardian, UK
Some 440 people died homeless in the UK in the last 12 months – but the government doesn’t even bother to count them
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a book I wished I’d had to hand as I scrolled through the names of the homeless dead in Monday’s paper. The book gives words for emotions that have yet to be defined and I needed a word that reflected my pain, disbelief and anger. No word that existed was strong enough.
Whenever I read about a homeless person’s body being found in some sad and loveless place (an underground car park, a rubbish tip, a bus stop) I wonder if it is one of the delicate and fragile people that I met while I was writing my book Four Feet Under. The 30 people who told their stories for the book (and the dozens of others who didn’t want me to record their thoughts but didn’t mind just talking to me) spoke not only about their lives as they were forced to live them now but also about their fear of a death that was likely to be early, lonely, and very possibly violent.
What I didn’t realise as I listened to them was that if or when this did happen, the society which permitted them to die in this way would not bother to count them afterwards. And why weren’t the big homeless charities demanding these figures?
The government didn’t forget to ask the Office for National Statistics to count the homeless dead: they didn’t count the homeless because the homeless don’t count. That was left to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), which had to rely on charity to do the job of counting the at least 440 homeless deaths in the UK in the 12 months since October 2017.
Four Feet Under has first-hand accounts of homeless people living out their agonising lives on the streets, in the open and undefended. But there are also hundreds of men and women who die in hostels and B&Bs. So many desperate people, all alone and often not found for weeks or months. The people in my book were malnourished, often with physical illnesses and mostly seriously mentally ill: people who have no business being out on the street trying to fend for themselves. The causes of death listed by the BIJ included prolonged starvation, suicide and violence.Conversely, most councils have protocols in place for dealing with dead dogs found in the street. There are dedicated crews who collect the little bodies and then do their level best to identify the animal, with some even keeping the information on file for years. Not so for human beings who die alone without a front door key.Homelessness in Britain is now a full-scale humanitarian crisis. When the government talks about putting money into this or that initiative, or promising paltry sums that sound like a lot (but never are) they are just sweeping the problem under the carpet. Periodically they’re shamed into making some stock statement about how they care and how the figures are unacceptable. Actually, they appear to be entirely acceptable: they are the reality that is created and then accepted by a government that does next to nothing unless or until someone like the BIJ comes along and embarrasses them.
If they wanted to eliminate this monstrous scourge on our collective conscience, they would. That is their job: to create a safe, secure and prosperous society for all. Including the vulnerable.
And it is vital to remember that these vulnerable people weren’t necessarily born vulnerable. They were made vulnerable by savage cuts to benefits, by encouraging an unstable housing market, by not controlling rents, by inadequate care systems, by inadequate mental health provision, and now by universal credit.
People often ask me if I ever look for or see the people whose life stories and dreams are in my book. It is a difficult question. I became very fond of them, so there is a part of me that would love to see them, talk to them again but there is no answer I can give. If do see them again it means everything is still spiralling out of control for them and if I don’t see them again, I worry that they have died.