Our thanks to Nigel for this. He writes:

Hi Mike.

This caught my eye because it’s so typical in terms of rough sleepers who die on the street, almost exclusively male, and to remind readers of our brothers out there in this season.

Jon’s story begins with a traumatic incident when he’s a teenager, which then leads on to self-medication through drug use, which disfigures his life with bouts of being “clean” and addiction. Motivating factor for rehab being to see his daughter, and his periods of homelessness being no doubt when he feels his daughter and partner are better off without him. And after a life of slow suicide he dies in a doorway in Hull.

His sister and partner appear to have cared for him as best they could, as did the good folk of Hull. But of course all through his life the standard response will have been his recovery was his responsibility and the initial trauma is “no excuse”. Being a working age man, he would have been at the very bottom of the queue for any help to get off the streets.

The story is all too familiar. Tragically the low priority in the “points” or “priority” system as a working age man who was “intentionally homeless” would no doubt have been matched by his own belief in his worthlessness. As you read it, the story is shot through with a sort of fatalism which assumes nothing could be done. A fatalism that is in total contrast to the public horror at the very occasional death of a woman living rough.

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