Some of the hundreds of disabled people left homeless on London’s streets have described how they came to be living in tents just yards from where the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) used to have many of its offices.
An area behind the historic Adelphi building in central London, which looks out over the Thames, has become a temporary home for several disabled people, with a line of tents pitched in the shadow of the huge office block.
As recently as 2012, some DWP departments were based in the grade II-listed Adelphi.
One of the current tenants of the building is the Economist magazine.
When Disability News Service (DNS) visited the Adelphi late last month, there were about 10 tents pitched against a wall just yards from its back entrance.
All four of the occupants DNS spoke to were disabled people.
None of them knew of the building’s historic connection with DWP.
Iesha Muhammad, who shares her tent with her autistic husband Dominic and has the life-limiting condition ALS, said her experience with universal credit had been “appalling” even though “they understand I’m a vulnerable person”.
She said she has been given an early morning appointment by the jobcentre but when she explained that it took her longer to get up in the morning and to get to the meeting because of her health condition, she was told: “If you can survive on the streets, you can get here on time.”
She said: “We are on universal credit, but it’s less than it should be.
“We have been told numerous times we cannot have crisis loans. It’s either life or death on the streets.”
Despite receiving universal credit, it has not helped the couple find housing.
Without a guarantor, she says, landlords will not accept people who claim benefits.
Another of those living in the tents, Alex, came to Britain 13 years ago and was a construction worker until he developed a heart condition and needed to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) fitted, while he also has a mental health condition and epilepsy.
He is forced to rely on personal independence payment (PIP), while a council key worker supports him with his long-delayed universal credit claim.
He says he receives £500 a month through PIP but that is “far away not enough” and means he cannot afford all the medicines he needs.
He said: “I am trying to stay positive. I feel sad to see so many [homeless people].”
The housing situation of his neighbour, Brian Smith, is complex and he says he does not blame DWP.
Smith has both mental health and physical impairments, including schizophrenia, and left his flat in Oxfordshire after being sectioned following his brother’s death, as he felt increasingly isolated, and due to problems with his medication.
Until his tenancy expires, he says, he won’t be able to approach DWP for financial help with his housing, although he receives both employment and support allowance and the daily living and mobility elements of PIP.
He says he enjoys the company of the other homeless people who have pitched their tents behind the Adelphi.
He said: “I have never felt better. For me too much time on your own isn’t good for you.
“I need people around me. Down here you’re left alone [by the authorities].”
But he told DNS that other disabled people who live in the tents are in a more difficult situation.
He said: “Some people have got no benefits. People like us who do get benefits do try and help them out.
“I can’t see one of my fellow men struggling for a sandwich or a cup of tea.
“I know quite a few here don’t get benefits or have been suspended for some reason or other.”
Asked how he felt about there being so many homeless people living on the streets, he said: “I don’t like to see it in the 21st century.”
He believes about 90 per cent of those living in tents behind the Adelphi are disabled.
He receives support from the nearby St Martin-in-the-Fields day centre.
He said: “If you go there between eight and nine [in the morning] you will see them all queuing up inside.
“You will realise just how many disabled people are on the street.
“The big majority of the people you will talk to will be disabled people in one way or another.”
DNS approached DWP, Westminster council, St Martin-in-the-Fields and London mayor Sadiq Khan about the presence of so many disabled people on London’s streets, and whether universal credit might be worsening the situation.
A Westminster council spokesperson said: “As the centre of London, Westminster is a destination for rough sleepers from both the UK as well as abroad and the council spends far more than any other council – £7million a year – to help those arriving here.
“We work with charity partners to provide outreach teams across the city.
“These teams work day and night to find, and offer support to, people sleeping rough on our streets. Known gathering places are visited frequently.
“We aim to assess every person on the streets based on their specific disabilities or vulnerability, with either the council or our charity partners offering support based on individual needs.
“We appreciate each person has unique, complex needs and many have physical disabilities or serious mental health problems which can create barriers to accessing help.
“Our staff do everything they can to accommodate these specific needs. Regrettably not all those with complex needs choose to accept support.”
The council said there was a recognised correlation between spending longer on the street and developing complex needs such as issues with mental and physical health, and that many people may not be disabled when they come onto the streets, but will almost inevitably become more disabled the longer that situation continues.
The council said that was why its goal was always to help people access support and eventually help them off the streets and into accommodation.
St Martin-in-the-Fields had not responded to requests to comment by noon today (Thursday).
Figures provided by London’s mayor Sadiq Khan to the London assembly two years ago showed there were 786 people with a “learning or physical disability” seen rough sleeping in the capital in 2021-22.
A spokesperson for the mayor, who is standing for re-election next month, said he had made tackling rough sleeping a priority since he was first elected in 2016, quadrupling London’s rough sleeping budget and delivering “record funding to homelessness charities and service providers across the capital, helping over 16,000 people off the streets”.
She said he had also delivered “record-breaking affordable homebuilding, including the highest council homebuilding levels since the 1970s” and had “invested in specialist and supported housing programmes”.
She added: “But Sadiq is well aware that more support is needed.
“Disabled people have been disproportionately affected by Tory cuts to our social security system and to council budgets, along with ministers’ continuing failure to ban ‘no fault’ evictions so that renters are secure in their homes.
“This is why he has repeatedly called on the government to give London the funding it needs to carry on delivering more genuinely affordable homes.
“If Sadiq is re-elected on May 2nd, he will continue to do everything he can to end street homelessness in our city and to provide support to disabled people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.”
A government spokesperson told DNS in a statement: “We know the challenges many are facing, which is why we are increasing disability benefits by 6.7 per cent and providing an unprecedented £108 billion cost of living support package.
“We are also spending £2.4 billion to help people at risk of homelessness and support rough sleepers and will continue to work with local authorities to help people off the streets for good.”
DWP declined to say whether it believed problems with universal credit could be partly to blame for the number of disabled people who were homeless in London.
But it said the number of people in families where someone was disabled and were in poverty, after housing costs, fell by 100,000 between 2022 and 2023.
DNS reported in January that the proportion of families with disabled children who were living in poverty rose by nearly a third in two years, even before the cost-of-living crisis, according to a new poverty measurement being developed by DWP.
The measurement – which aims to provide a more accurate way of calculating deprivation – showed that nearly half of all individuals in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult in the UK were living in poverty by 2021-22.
The new measurement, which calculates “individuals in low resources”, found the proportion of people in families with disabled children who were living in poverty increased from 33 per cent in 2019-20 to 43 per cent in 2021-22.
And the proportion of people in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult who were living in poverty, according to the new measure, rose from 39 per cent in 2019-20 to 46 per cent in 2021-22.
Picture: Brian Smith (left) and Iesha Muhammad
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