A Birmingham MP says he was “shocked” at the number of people sleeping on the streets in Birmingham after spending a night meeting them.

Liam Byrne (Lab Hodge Hill) joined council staff, housing experts and volunteers to meet people sleeping on the streets and in doorways.

He said: “I was shocked by the number of people I met.”

One homeless man in his 60s said he had been sent to Birmingham by a London council.

Many were using Spice or similar drugs.

A quarter were women.

And the MP encountered one man with serious injuries, who had been attacked by his partner.

Mr Byrne was taking part in the annual “rough sleeper count”, when council staff and volunteers spend the night on the streets to discover how many people have no roof over their head.

A homeless man, who gave his name as Dave, begs on the streets of Birmingham

Also involved were staff from Midland Heart, a Birmingham-based housing organisation employed by the city council to try to make contact with rough sleepers and get them into accommodation.

The figures are sent to the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The count lasted from about 11pm to 3.30am. Each team was given an area of Birmingham and walked the streets looking for rough sleepers.

Mr Byrne said: “It was shocking. It was really distressing.

“There are people with pretty profound mental health problems.”

Some said they were homeless because their Employment and Support Allowance, a benefit given to some people who are ill or disabled, had been stopped, said Mr Byrne.

Liam Byrne said there was no place for Donald Trump in Birmingham.
Liam Byrne MP

One man said he had been sent to Birmingham from London. Some London councils have a policy of sending homeless people to other parts of the country including Birmingham, although they do arrange accommodation for them.

Mr Byrne said: “There was one guy who was 60 who had been sent up from London and was sleeping in a shop doorway in the city centre. He said he had been sent to Birmingham by his social worker.

“We had a couple of people who were heroin addicts.”

It follows warnings from Birmingham City Council that it is having to move local homeless families OUT of the city.
Rough sleeping has risen in Birmingham

Some had been using drugs known as “new psychoactive substances”, which were also once known as legal highs, said Mr Byrne.

“There were people passed out in doorways on Black Mamba.

“One person had a terrible wound on his back that we had to try to negotiate an ambulance for.

“Probably about a quarter of the people we met were women.”

Figures from the latest count have not yet been published. But counts from previous years suggest the number of rough sleepers in Birmingham have shot up - with 14 rough sleepers in 2013, 20 people in 2014, 36 people in 2015 and 55 people in 2016.

Video Loading

Mr Byrne said there were places in shelters available for many rough sleepers but they often had problems that couldn’t be solved simply by offering them a bed.

“This is not just about providing shelter. It’s about providing complex services that can actually help these citizens get on top of the struggles they have got.

“That’s not just a bed for the night. It means providing someone who can help people get through their problems with benefits, or with mental health or addiction.

“They were on the streets because something major had happened, often a major trauma. And that’s not a cheap fix.

“One guy I met last night had some pretty pronounced mental health problems. He had some difficulties with his medication and was very confused, and didn’t want to accept a place.

Two rough sleepers in Birmingham city centre. the day after a man who was sleeping rough died on the coldest night of 2016.

“Another man said he was trying to get clean and was worried about the people he might meet in a shelter who might tempt him back into a bad path. He was trying to avoid bad influences, and that meant he was sleeping in the lobby of a bank in the city centre.

“Some were from eastern Europe and just didn’t know the system.

“We were able to get many of the people we met into accommodation. But everyone we met had complex needs, whether they had mental health issues or substance issues or were from abroad.

“They had all basically taken different journeys but something bad had happened to them.”

The Government says it wants to cut rough sleeper numbers in half by 2022 and end the problem entirely by 2027.

But Mr Byrne said: “It’s just not good enough to wait ten years.”