Homelessness figures – just how many rough sleepers are there in Manchester?

By Liam Barnes, features writer

Homelessness has become a bigger issue since the economic crisis, the recession and the stalling recovery, with worries that numbers could rise as more people default on mortgage payments and lose their houses.

A Sunday Times article this week highlighted the ‘hidden homeless’, where businessmen and middle-class adults told of their dramatic descents into rough sleeping and sheltered accommodation, yet the official figures suggest the problem is much less severe than people fear.

According to Manchester City Council, there are only seven rough sleepers in the city, taken from their own counts on the streets in November 2010.

However, various homeless charities have questioned these figures, and a 2007 report by Grant Shapps MP, now the Housing Minister, said government counts “drastically underestimate” the true numbers.

Judith Vickers, team leader of homeless charity Lifeshare, said: “This time last year we were doing about 50 breakfasts for the homeless – not all are rough sleepers, but now we’re doing 80-odd.

“They’re not true figures: the way that the official count is done is that you have to be lying down vertically on a public highway, and if you’re in a bus shelter that counts as a roof.  They don’t go into derelict buildings or under arches – if you went round the back of Piccadilly station at night you’d find loads of people sleeping rough.”

Lydia Chan, communications officer of Manchester-based homeless support charity Mustard Tree, said: “The way the council does the count doesn’t reflect the number of rough sleepers – we know where they are.

“It’s not a true representation; it’s not even a decent estimate.”

She added: “If the council say they have enough provisions [for homeless accommodation] then why are all the shelters full and why can’t we refer people to these shelters?”

 “At the same time, the council is doing their best, and they’re working with organisations like ourselves to reduce homelessness in the city. Manchester City Council is really brilliant at this.”

A spokeswoman from a rough sleeping charity in Manchester, who did not want to be named, was more supportive of the council’s figures.

“I think you need to take the figures and look at them historically, and it’s been collected in the same way over a number of years.

 “Most of us who work in Manchester see that the figures may not be completely accurate, but it’s good for showing trends – it’s been a downward trend in Manchester since late 1990s and the figures have represented this.”

“It’s very difficult to estimate, and there’s an issue that people sometimes talk about rough sleepers and homeless people in the same sentence.”

On the rough sleeping figures, Smyth Harper, head of news and media at Manchester City Council, said: “They are merely a snapshot from a given night and are carried out to be given to central government to monitor the number of rough sleepers in a city and a way of looking at whether a city's strategy to tackle rough sleeping is working.

“So if the figures increased it may indicate that we need to review our strategy, whereas at the moment there's nothing to indicate it isn't working. The figures are accurate, and indicate that our strategy is working. This is based not just on these figures, but from the intelligence we gather from our outreach workers who are out on the streets on a daily basis to talk to, support and find accommodation for people who are rough sleeping. 

“The head counts are subject to strict government guidelines and have all been independently verified. What you can't say is that there's only seven people sleeping rough in Manchester. On any given night, it could be more, it could be less. These figures are indicative to ensure that what we are doing is working, rather than empirical figures on how many people sleep rough in the city.

“The difference between someone who is homeless and someone who is a rough sleeper is simply that someone who is homeless is an individual who has no accommodation where they have legal right to occupy but do have a roof over their heads, be it B&B, hostel and so on. A rough sleeper is someone who is literally sleeping on the street.

"Our view as a council is that there is no need for anyone to sleep rough and we back that up with action and support to do our best to ensure that's the case.”

However charity workers disagreed. Ms Vickers said: “How can they be correct if you don’t go into all the places people are sleeping?

“They’re trying to make out we’ve not got a problem with homelessness and beggars, but we do, and it’ll only get worse with new housing association rules.”

“If you’re sleeping rough you don’t want to be noticed as you get a lot of harassment from the police, who just tell you to move on,” said Ms Chan.

“I doubt they would go into the dangerous areas where people are sleeping, like abandoned buildings and building sites.”

“They could improve the quality of their data by going into day centres and asking people who they see and who they encounter every day.”

The homeless charity woman who withheld her name again took a different view. She said: “A combination would give a more accurate picture, but we always get hung up the on the statistics – when the figures come out we go back over the same old ground and we should be helping people rather than spending so much time arguing on the numbers.”

The crux of the issue is that, as most homeless people are by their nature transient, unaccounted for and reluctant to be found, full and up-to-the-minute statistics will always be difficult to collate, and this is especially true for rough sleepers. There is also a case that many people confuse rough sleepers for all homeless people, for whom the figures are far higher.

However, that a significant number of charities dealing with homeless people contest the accuracy of the estimations could suggest there is a need to re-examine the method, regularity and results of such data. With so many homeless hidden from view, a sweep of the streets once a year seems inadequate.

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