Letter: Cold comfort for the homeless

Sir: You report figures of deaths of homeless people on the streets ('Suicide and violence are taking toll on homeless', 11 December). Sir George Young, when confronted with these shaming statistics, made reference to the cold weather shelters and the efforts by his department to get homeless people into 'somewhere warm and dry over Christmas'.

Cold weather shelters typify this Government's 'sticking plaster' approach to the growing homelessness problem. Its long-term housing strategy is non-existent. Local authority housing departments are so under-resourced they can no longer meet their obligations under the homeless persons' legislation. Housing associations are the so-called providers of social housing for the future, yet in the year Community Care is introduced, the proportion of their budget spent on special needs (the main route of access to housing associations for single people) has been cut.

The fact that people who are homeless are 34 times more likely to kill themselves shows starkly how damaging it is to a person's mental health. People who are vulnerable for health reasons are supposed to be accepted as priority homeless and housed by a local authority. Ever-tightening resources means the ethos of most local housing departments is to turn people away unless they jump through every hoop, not an easy task when you are homeless and experiencing mental distress.

The figures from Crisis about deaths of homeless people are one end of a continuum of homelessness which is profoundly damaging the health and self-esteem of millions of people, from children being brought up in bed and breakfast accommodation and young people fleeing abusive relationships, to old people living isolated lives in grim institutional hostels. In 1993 we should make it clear to Sir George Young that we do not accept that the best we can offer people is somewhere warm and dry over Christmas.

Yours sincerely,

SARAH GORTON

Medical Campaign Project

London, E8

14 December