Dispatch from the frontline: We begin 2024 working hard to prevent deaths

As temperatures across the UK plummet, our team has started the year focusing on emergency responses to prevent the deaths of people experiencing homelessness. This winter, our partnership with Haringey Welcome and other grassroots groups will prevent refugees becoming street homeless. Despite Home Office U-turns, the situation on the ground remains dire, with hundreds of people facing street homelessness in the coldest months.

Out on the streets

This week we are out on early morning street runs checking in with people who are stuck outside in the cold. Other crews such as Coffee Afrik and Streets Kitchen are also out, with far too many people being missed by inadequate SWEP (severe weather emergency) processes. This week we have all highlighted the failings of Streetlink, despite it being promoted to the public as a solution to homelessness.

Coffee Afrik reporting from the streets of East London

Investigating deaths across the UK

As well as front line support, we kicked off our investigation into the deaths of people experiencing homelessness with our crew sending out more than 300 FOIs on January 2nd to assess how, why and when people died in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2023. The findings will be published in March 2024 to support policy and practice change and the people who have died will be added to our memorial.

This comes as the ONS is consulting on stopping collecting it’s own data on the deaths of people experiencing homelessness. We spoke out against this with the Financial Times and the Guardian yesterday:

Our Dying Homeless Project lead Gill Taylor told the Guardian the proposal was symbolic of the way the government “sees homelessness as ‘a lifestyle choice’,” a reference to a tweet posted in November by the former home secretary Suella Braverman.

“Now is not the time to be turning away from who these people are and why they died,” she said. “Everywhere in the public sector, change only comes as a result of an evidence base, and without it we are afraid change won’t happen.”

Taylor said scrapping the statistic would be “a very callous thing to do at a time when we know there is an absolute crisis in homelessness and more people are dying”.

Whatever happens with the ONS, we will continue to monitor and remember with love each person who dies across the UK. We will also remain on the streets working in solidarity with people and trying to prevent as many deaths as we can through direct action and policy change.

How you can help

If you would like to contribute to our emergency fund with Haringey Welcome you can do so here:

We will soon be recruiting volunteers to help with our street work and other work, if you are interested you can email nathan@museumofhomelessness.org to be added to the list for the 2024 crew shout out.

If you would like us to remember someone on our memorial for 2023 or you have information on the deaths of people experiencing homelessness that you think would help our investigation please contact our lead Gill Taylor gill@museumofhomelessness.org or submit a memory direct to the project here

Thank you for being alongside us