{"id":105939,"date":"2025-05-16T09:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T09:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/105939\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T09:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T09:44:08","slug":"why-are-so-many-people-sleeping-rough-in-westminster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/105939\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are so many people sleeping rough in Westminster?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ollie* remembered the day he sold a copy of the Big Issue for \u00a3550.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While selling the magazine on the streets of Westminster, a young man approached him with 11 \u00a350 notes.<\/p>\n

Ollie was initially sceptical and declined at first.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cNormally when people give you money on the street, they want sex or drugs or both.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the young man\u2019s mother insisted he take the money and Ollie used it to stay in a hotel for a few days.<\/p>\n

Ollie suspects that stories like these are one of the reasons Westminster has established itself as the hub for rough sleeping in London.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cPeople fall into a trap when they come to Westminster. They think the streets are paved with gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a decade of reports by the organisation CHAIN<\/a>, Westminster is the London borough with the highest rate of rough sleeping, making up 18% of London\u2019s total population in 2023-2024.<\/p>\n

Between January and March 2025, 1001 rough sleepers were sighted in Westminster.<\/p>\n

The second highest borough was the neighbouring Camden with 339 sightings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The many reasons behind this phenomenon are complicated, but some are well-linked.<\/p>\n

Firstly, London is widely considered a place of opportunity, and Westminster is at its centre.<\/p>\n

The borough contains four big railway stations, Charing Cross, Marylebone, Paddington, and Victoria, making it easily accessible to those beyond London.<\/p>\n

Between 2023 and 2024, only 37% of Westminster\u2019s rough sleepers were from the UK, 9% below the London average.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Jenny Travassos is the director of housing and services at the Passage<\/a> homeless shelter and was head of homelessness for Westminster council from 2014-2020.<\/p>\n

She stated that people outside the UK, citing Romania as an example, often seek work in Westminster to provide money for their families back home.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cFor someone to come over here and rough sleep for six months\u2019 work, that\u2019s more than a couple of years\u2019 wages in Romania.\u201d<\/p>\n

The number of Romanians seen rough sleeping in Westminster was 371, more than one in three of the Londonwide population.<\/p>\n

Along with work opportunities, Westminster also provides a relative amount of security, as the borough has abundant services supporting rough sleepers, which offer food and temporary shelter.<\/p>\n

Sandwich and soup runs, which are not attached to those services, also enable rough sleepers to sustain a life on the streets.<\/p>\n

These securities, of course, do not offer complete safety to those rough sleeping.<\/p>\n

David*, now 40, first rough-slept when he was 19.<\/p>\n

He grew up in Westminster and knew the places he could sleep in relative safety.<\/p>\n

He would never sleep on the Strand because the active nightlife there could lead to drunken aggression.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cPeople would be kicked, people\u2019s bags would be taken from them down the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

David also expressed his anxieties about trusting other rough sleepers.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cYou never fully sleep properly. You don\u2019t wake up rested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Homelessness is organised locally within London and the UK, meaning boroughs are responsible for finding housing for rough sleepers in that area.<\/p>\n

The system for finding housing is incredibly complex and requires rough sleepers to establish a local connection with that borough.<\/p>\n

One way to establish a local connection is living in the area for six out of the last 12 months or three out of the last five years.<\/p>\n

People can attain this local connection by proving they have been rough sleeping in the area for six months.<\/p>\n

Along with the local connection, they need to fulfil further criteria to be considered for long-term accommodation.<\/p>\n

Ollie had been rough sleeping in Westminster for two years before he could get housed by the council.<\/p>\n

At one point he tried to argue for a local connection after being in a Westminster hospital for six months but this was rejected.<\/p>\n

For various reasons, many rough sleepers do not want to return to the places they departed.<\/p>\n

With the support measures provided in Westminster, many are willing to face six months of rough sleeping to attain the sought-after local connection.<\/p>\n

On top of this, the data shows a steep decrease in the provision of long-term accommodation yearly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One of the reasons for this may be the nationwide housing crisis, which is particularly affecting Westminster.<\/p>\n

As there is little land to develop new housing, Westminster\u2019s delivery target of 985 new homes each year is less than 2% of the London-wide target.<\/a><\/p>\n

Travassos wants the public to know the best thing you can give a rough sleeper is information about the services in your borough.<\/p>\n

Travassos, who has experienced rough sleeping herself, said: \u201cAs a professional, I would never give money or food \u2013 we provide free food.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonate time, donate expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Ollie and David,\u00a0 they want to break all the misconceptions associated with homelessness.<\/p>\n

David said: \u201cThe person reading this report doesn\u2019t realise how close to homelessness they could be with only a couple of things going wrong in their life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of good people who have made good decisions, but life has gone wrong and they have ended up homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us is that far away from joining the people that we look down on.\u201d<\/p>\n

*Pseudonyms have been used.<\/p>\n

Feature image: Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ollie* remembered the day he sold a copy of the Big Issue for \u00a3550. While selling the magazine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,5034,2814,393,4884,6332,609,1429,257,12,285,17562,16,15,3069],"class_list":{"0":"post-105939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-council","10":"tag-data","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-homelessness","14":"tag-human-interest","15":"tag-life","16":"tag-london","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-rough-sleeping","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-westminster"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114516870072893287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}