Kent News - Charities warn of the hidden homeless

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Charities warn of the hidden homeless

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Picture: Tim Stubbins Photography

Homeless charities say figures released this week hide the full extent of the number of people living rough on our streets.

Porchlight published the results of its annual county-count of rough sleepers on Thursday and found that Tunbridge Wells had the highest number.

The survey began on Wednesday at 11pm and ended in the early hours of Thursday finding 23 people sleeping rough in the 13 districts across county.

Evidence of 31 more people sleeping on the streets was found by the 256 volunteers who carried out the survey.

However, Gill Bryant, outreach strategic area manager for the charity, said the count has its limitations and the real figure for homelessness in the county is nearly 200 people.

"It is just a snap shot, one night a year," she said. "The count has strict guidelines where we can only look at areas that are visible to the public eye.

"Homeless people find places to hide away from people in empty garages, bin sheds and car parks. They find shelter away from the public where no one is going to bully them and police won’t move them on.

"These people will never be found in the count."

The survey found three people sleeping rough in Tunbridge Wells and evidence of a further nine, which was the highest in the county.

John Handley, general manger of The Bridge Trust, which is based in Tonbridge and works with homeless people in west Kent, said up to about 20 people, could be sleeping rough in Tunbridge Wells.

"It has always been a problem in Tunbridge Wells.

"We know for a fact there are people sleeping rough on Tunbridge Wells common but of course you cannot walk across in the middle of the night.

"There are a lot more people than are found."

The results from the count are fed directly into official government statistics. Mr Handley said he would like to campaign for the Department of Local Government and Communities, which collates the figures, to change the counting method.

Mr Handley, who took part in the count in Tonbridge where no homeless people were found, said: "Last night with the rain people had disappeared.

"We had one guy who would sleep underneath a lorry," he said. "They hide wherever they can. We could not search Hayesdown Country Park or the race course."

He added: "It make it a futile effort because it is not representative of the true figure because you are not allowed to go to the places where rough sleepers would be found.

"It is ludicrous. Last year, 498 people were found in the whole of England, which is probably how many there are in the centre of London."

In Sevenoaks evidence was found of only one person. But Porchlight’s Ms Bryant said that a concerned member of the public had phoned the charity’s freephone helpline to report finding a man living homeless in woodland near Sevenoaks.

She urged more people to phone if they found people living rough because then the charity could send out one of its outreach team to offer them support finding accommodation.

"Tunbridge Wells is more affluent but there has always been some evidence of people sleeping rough there," Ms Bryant said.

"Through word of mouth we’ve heard there is a rough sleeper problem and we were contacted last week to say there had been an increase in reports of rough sleeping."

She said one reason for the high number could be because there were some services for homeless people in the town and there tends to be higher numbers of rough sleepers where there is good provision.

In Tunbridge Wells, Bridge Trust volunteers give out food at the multi-storey car park in Crescent Road, The Soup Bowl in the same street also offers food for homeless people, the Crisis Recovery Day Centre runs from the United Reform Church supports people with addictions and those sleeping rough and Porchlight provides an outreach service.

On Wednesday, there were 75 people accessing the rough sleeper support from Porchlight’s county-wide outreach service.

And on the same day, a further 123 people were on the waiting list to access the team’s support; therefore 198 people had declared themselves homeless ahead of the count.

Ms Bryant said there was often an increase in the number of people on the streets at the beginning of December ahead of the Christmas period.

"At Christmas because people think about it, lots of different companies, organisations and churches will do more to help homeless community," she added.

"There are often Christmas facilities in different churches so it gets a bit quieter but come New Year the numbers are up again."

A Communities and Local Government spokeswoman said: "The count methodology has always been robust as independent evaluations have proved on numerous occasions, but as outlined in our Rough Sleeping Strategy we are going further to make our monitoring of rough sleepers even more comprehensive by introducing in depth Street Needs Audits which will identify individuals, their profile and time spent sleeping rough, whether they have an active action plan and which is the lead agency responsible for them."

If you see someone sleeping rough in Kent, call Porchlight’s freephone helpline on 0800 567 7699.

POSTED: 28/11/2009 09:00:00