A Christmas Tragedy: Life and death on the streets

The call was backed by fellow action group members, and front line outreach and night shelter workers who spoke of the suffering and trauma they witnessed.

Homeless people living rough on the streets told the Sunday Herald about a dangerous existence that "sucks out your soul" and and leaves them crushed, hopeless and suicidal.

Despite groundbreaking Scottish legislation, introduced in 2012, which means anyone "unintentionally homeless" is entitled to accommodation, many homeless people said that they had been turned away and left with no choice but to sleep on cardboard in freezing doorways.

Figures released earlier this year showed 39 people homeless people died in Glasgow in a ten month period between May 2016 and March 2017 while 18 people assessed as homeless in Edinburgh died in between 2015-16.

Charities claim that estimates that 5000 people in Scotland sleep on the streets in the course of a year are likely to be "the tip of the iceberg" with a recent study by Heriott Watt University for Crisis predicting rough sleeping will double from 800 across Scotland on any one night – already a 10 percent rise for the first time in ten years – to 1500 by 2041.

The Edinburgh winter shelter, run by Bethany Christian Trust, has already reached capacity on several nights since opening in October and will increase capacity from 49 sleeping mats to 75 on Monday. In Glasgow the winter shelter run by Glasgow City Mission at the Lodging House Mission day centre in the Gallowgate opened on Friday night.

Last week the Rough Sleeping Action group revealed a raft of measures backed by an initial £328,000 of Scottish Government’s funding for extra night shelter beds and street outreach workers.

Additional details revealed to the Sunday Herald include plans to open outreach buildings on cold nights, with hostel rooms made available and alternatives offered outside the cities if they are fully booked. "Severe weather packs" will be given out by Simon Community Scotland, including thermal layers, waterproofs, and sleeping bags, as a last resort.

Sparkes said: "It is definitely a crisis and should be treated as a national emergency. Thankfully political leaders on all sides seem to be treating it seriously and looking for long term sustainable solutions as well as short term improvements."

He said his team heard about desperate situations every day with one man from Edinburgh released from hospital after surgery straight on to the streets just last week. "You simply cannot exaggerate how bad it is to be sleeping on the street," Sparkes added.

Glasgow still has the largest population of rough sleepers – about 27 percent – with an estimated 120 people sleeping rough in the city on any one night, according to Alison Watt, deputy director of Shelter Scotland. The biggest increase is in Edinburgh where accommodation costs are highest.

"For the first time in ten years rough sleeping in Scotland is going up," she said.

Admitting that available figures were "the tip of the iceberg" she said it was important to remember the hidden homeless. "We also know that 28,000 households presented as homeless last year - that's one every 19minutes. It's worth remembering that 6000 kids woke up in homeless accommodation this morning. Rough sleeping is the hard edge of homelessness but it also affects families too."

The Scottish Government did not respond to a request for comment but last week First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed its "commitment to eradicate rough sleeping".

SHIVERING IN HIS SLEEP BAG, HE TELLS US: 'IT'S COLDEST AT THREE IN THE MORNING'

GLASGOW city centre at lunchtime on the first Friday in December is jam-packed with shoppers laden down with bags, office workers out to grab a sandwich, buskers, and Christmas lights.

Sitting at the corner of Buchanan Street, outside cosmetics chain Lush – the window behind decorated with Christmas trees and parcels – is David Davies, a 42-year-old former solider, wrapped in a sleeping bag and holding up a battered, cardboard sign about his plight.

A big guy with a hard-as-nails stare, he lost his mum when he was seven and many years later his wife to a heroin overdose. As a teenager he didn't get on with his step-family and joined the army to escape. He shows me the scar on this head and other injuries from combat, and digs in his rucksack to pull out a Royal Scots Regiment top to back up his claims. He thinks he’s been homeless since 2013 but PSTD and mental health issues make facts harder to pin down.

He deals with all this by drinking litres of vodka every day – some in his beer can right now – which keeps the fear, and the cold, at bay. Tonight, he'll be sleeping in the doorway outside Thomas Cooke. He doesn't want to go to the newly opened night shelter as he claims it will be full of drug addicts.

In the background a preacher is reaching the climax of his sermon. "And I bring you good news," he proclaims. David covers his head with his huge hands and mutters softly: "I wish he would shut up.”

I’m with Robert, one of four trainees with Shelter Scotland’s Time for Change team, who use their own experience of homelessness to help others get the help they need.

Over the last year, working in partnership with others across the city such as street teams and legal services, they’ve been focused on make sure people in the most vulnerable situations know they have the right – under Scottish legislation from 2012 – to housing.

It’s a departure for Shelter, who used to wait until people came to them. Now, in recognition of the growing number of people in Scotland who are street homeless, this small team goes to them.

In regular drop-ins at B&Bs, drug crisis clinics and day centres they have helped many people over the last six months. They accompany people to housing services, helping fight their corner. While many report being turned away from statutory services, so far Time for Change has a 100 percent success rate of getting people housed.

Robert's been where you are, I tell Davies, who looks him in the eye and says: “Thing is, I’m an alcoholic. "Ah, mate," says Robert. "I've done all that."

“All that” includes 15 years of rough sleeping, sofa surfing, and stays in numerous hostels after his relationship broke down and he lost his job. He was too proud to ask for help from his family.

“The first time I was homeless was in the nineties and I asked the street team to help me and it was a case of here's a sleeping bag, here's a bottle of water,” he says. “I was basically told if you're a young male we don't have any accommodation for you.

“I slept under motorway bridges, down by the Clyde, in shop doorways, in closes, anywhere I could get shelter and could hide myself away because it was really embarrassing. I still see some people who I was on the streets with, and they’re still here.”

Just along the street, outside the Co-op, Robert bumps into someone he remembers from that time. He’s now got a flat but the women he’s stopped to chat to are not so lucky. Maggie - who's eating crisps - and her pal Tricia are both sleeping rough at the moment, which they report with the sort of unhappy acceptance. They know it's awful but it’s the way things are.

Tricia, 37, was doing well before her boyfriend - who she was living with - got put in jail and because her name wasn't on the flat's tenancy agreement, she was thrown out. Earlier this week she slept outside the abandoned BHS building in the city centre in a sleeping bag on a night when the temperatures fell below zero.

When she tried to present as homeless she was told that she was "too mad wi' it" (something she disputes) and should come back tomorrow. Whatever the truth, she didn’t get help.

We keep walking, passing and meet 21-year-old James who is pale in his blue sleeping bag and 32-year-old Casper, gaunt with a wispy beard, who started making art works to sell on the streets because he couldn’t bear the way people looked at him when he was begging. "It's coldest at 3am,” he says.

Much later I go past TJ Hughes, the Glasgow department store where 28-year-old Mathew Bloomer was found dead one Tuesday morning this March, after having slept rough in blizzard conditions. He had addiction and mental health issues. He was also a dad and an uncle, who loved Celtic and a good laugh with his mates.

The Shelter team remember him. It’s for people like Mathew Bloomer that this project exists, they say.

'EVERYTHING IS ABOUT SURVIVAL - IT SUCKS THE SOUL OUT OF YOU'

THOMAS Lyon never thought he’d be homeless. The knock at the door, bringing him notice to quit when his landlord went bankrupt came like a bolt from the blue. The Sheriff’s Officers who served the writ admitted he’d done nothing wrong but when he asked “what am I meant to do?” they just shrugged. Not their problem.

He started off sofa surfing but stress meant the drink and drug problems he’d managed to keep a lid on before becoming homeless spiralled quickly out of control. He ended up on the street, sleeping down by the Clyde.

Other homeless people kept him right – told him to go to the Wayside day centre for something to eat, and to “present” at the Hamish Allan Centre (emergency, out-of-hours housing advice service) for housing. He learned the hard way about getting robbed and teamed up with a fellow homeless “co-pilot” to watch his back.

Life was all about survival. “See before?” he says. “I had morals and principals and integrity. After six months on the street that's all gone. It sucks your soul right out you. Everything goes. Everything.”

His world was a revolving door of hostels, B&Bs and the street. He spoke to council services. They told him there was nothing available and gave him two bus tokens to soften the blow. The word on the street was he was one of “them” – the people the council judged too difficult to accommodate.

On the streets life got scarier and one night he was viciously attacked and stabbed leaving him traumatised and suffering flashbacks. He has since been diagnosed with PTSD. When he finally got a flat his addiction issues meant it turned into a drug den that he ended up abandoning because he couldn’t cope with what it had become.

Then, two years ago something changed. “My son came to find me,” he says. “He was 17 and he wanted to get to know me.” Thomas went to detox and from there finally managed to persuade his care manager to release funding to get him a place in residential rehab.

After five months, and newly clean and sober, bursting with pride, he graduated from rehab but without knowing where he was going to stay that night. Luckily for him a Shelter volunteer from the Time For Change project was present. When she discovered his situation she went with him to the housing office and argued his corner. He says, with no sense of drama, if she hadn’t done that he’d have ended up dead.

Newly clean he spent three weeks in a hostel full of addicts before finding a place in supported accommodation. He’s just accepted an offer of a permanent flat and this Christmas Day he will celebrate his first anniversary of sobriety. Life is still tough but meanwhile there is volunteering, recovery meetings, re-building relationship with family and proving that change really is possible with a little bit of help and human kindness.