A new snapshot count of people sleeping rough in Birmingham shows a dramatic 42% fall in a year, while across the West Midlands the number is down by nearly a quarter.
The region has easily seen the biggest decline in rough sleeping, according to data released this morning (February 27) by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Nationally, there’s been a nine per cent fall – suggesting local efforts to address the problem are having a more profound impact here than anywhere else.
The city council’s homeless chief Cllr Sharon Thompson praised the city-wide response to the crisis of rough sleeping after numbers peaked to an all time high last year.
This time the one-night count – seen as a way to give a snapshot of the problem – discovered 52 people sleeping rough across the city. The previous year some 91 people were counted.
The true number of rough sleepers is likely to be much higher but the snapshot is seen as a good way to measure trends. Critics say it is too simplistic a way to represent a hugely complex issue, particularly in the face of new research suggesting real figures are likely to be up to five times higher.
A big fall is also reported across the rest of the West Midlands, where the overall drop is 24%.
The count was held on a single night in October or November 2019, and is done by outreach workers, local charities and community groups and independently verified by Homeless Link. They seek out homeless people in known sleeping spots and gather information about gender, age and nationality.
The numbers counted this year include (the previous year’s number in brackets):
West Midlands region – 319 (420)
Birmingham 52 (91)
Bromsgrove 3 (0)
Dudley 4 (5)
North Warwickshire 0 (2)
Redditch 2 (7)
Sandwell 10 (14)
Solihull 6 (4)
Walsall 6 (11)
Wolverhampton 19 (14)
Cllr Sharon Thompson, Cabinet member for homes and neighbourhoods, said the fall in Birmingham had been down to a concerted city-wide effort to help people find and safely access alternatives to street life.
She praised faith and community volunteers for the huge impact they had made in the city, supporting rough sleepers with food, warmth and love, and signposting them to help.
They were a vital part of the city’s collaborative drive to get more rough sleepers into accommodation and support, she said.
Mayor Andy Street, who launched a regional Homelessness Taskforce in 2017, said: “Rough sleeping in particular has been shaming us as a region for several years, but thanks to some brilliant collaborative working we are now starting to properly address this.
“This is the first time since 2014 that the number of rough sleepers in the region has fallen, and to see it drop by a significant amount is especially pleasing.”
In the area covered by the West Midlands Combined Authority (which doesn’t include all of the West Midlands) there’s been a 32% fall.
Birmingham received around £800,000 from the Government’s Rough Sleeper Initiative (2018/19) to provide more beds and emergency help to support its work, while the Government announced yesterday (February 26) a pledge for an extra £236m nationally to tackle rough sleeping, alongside an urgent review into the issue by former homelessness tsar Dame Louise Casey.
