Earlier this month, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, asked the Law Commission to undertake a review the ‘protected categories’ in hate crime legislation.
Much of the media attention has focused on whether men, or elderly people, or other groups might also be added, but it seems to me there’s a far more obvious omission: rough sleepers.
As some of the most vulnerable people in society, they deserve every help and protection the law can offer them. Hidden, in plain view, they are exposed to the harsh reality of the street, facing ongoing risks above and beyond most other groups in society.
Indeed, the homelessness charity Crisis reported last year on the types of appalling attacks rough sleepers commonly face.
A third have been deliberately hit, kicked or experienced some other form of physical violence. Half have been intimidated or threatened, while sixty per cent have been verbally abused or harassed.
Disgustingly, one in ten have been urinated on.
A 2016 report from another homelessness charity, St. Mungo’s, found that a nearly a quarter of the 97 people reported to have died on the streets over the previous five years had experienced violent deaths.
Clearly, the reasons why people sleep on our streets are often complex, with mental health issues playing a large part, in many cases. Of more than a thousand people who had slept rough but were currently living in St Mungo’s supported accommodation, nearly three out of four (74%) had a mental health problem.
In addition, 65% had a drug or alcohol problem and nearly half (49%) had a physical health condition that has a substantial effect on their lives.
The impact of austerity over the last decade has seen more people sink between the cracks of the economy and mainstream society. The rise in rough-sleeping is the most visceral result. Add in a cost of living crisis, too little affordable housing and benefit sanctions its little wonder most big councils are dealing with an epidemic of rough sleeping.
The challenge is massive and complex, but most councils – as the statutory agencies leading the response on the ground – are doing their level best. In Liverpool, our guarantee is that there is always somewhere safe and warm for rough sleepers in to go under our ‘Always Room Inside’ policy.
We invest in wraparound day and night-time shelter provision, as well as a range of other benefits, in order to stop people graduating from debt to homelessness to rough sleeping. This is backed up with a range of ancillary services, including GP support.
As mayor of a city famed for its generosity and solidarity, our offer to rough sleepers also extends to those deemed by the Government to not be worthy of ‘recourse to public funds’ like failed asylum seekers. It’s a vindictive rule that we ignore here in Liverpool.
And as well as actively supporting rough sleepers, we also intervene ‘upstream’ - spending £12million a year on a range of local discretionary benefits to prevent hundreds of families in the city from becoming homeless in the first place.
When it comes to rough sleepers, though, we need to do everything possible to assist them in turning their lives around. As a council, our ongoing challenge is to encourage those who remain outside the system to come into it, despite the best efforts of our outreach teams and fantastic voluntary organisations.
Yet the overwhelming concern shown by most people towards rough sleepers is undermined by a small minority who seek to cause them harm. What would make a big difference, I believe, is to send out a loud and unequivocal message that attacks on rough sleepers, or abuse directed towards them, will never be tolerated and those guilty of it should face a harsher criminal sanction as a result.
As thousands of rough sleepers across the country face the prospect of another bitter winter on the streets, the very least we can offer them is a guarantee that anyone offering them violence or abuse will be punished for it.
Joe Anderson is the mayor of Liverpool