When I worked in housing advice, I was often struck by how few clients were persistent rough sleepers. My work was about preventing homelessness and my clients always had something to lose, even if they were in desperate circumstances.

There are others in desperate circumstances who have very little to lose. Now, as a local councillor for a ward covering Sheffield city centre, I have regular concerns over the visible number of people who appear to be homeless, sleeping rough, in hostels, with mental health problems, with substance misuse histories; they might be begging, they might be seen as aggressive and threatening, they might actually be aggressive and threatening. Their impact affects other people who live in the city centre (indoors). Many residents experience regular aggression and demands for money.

As a councillor, I know there are many (really good) workers who engage with the ‘street culture cohort’, whether it is the rough-sleeper teams, drug and alcohol workers, voluntary sector organisations or the city centre police community support officer, who has developed a routine of checking up on all the rough sleepers he knows from 6.30 am. The workers who engage with rough sleepers know that not all are homeless, not all are begging, not all use drugs. Like any other group of people, their needs are many and varied.

For the ones who obtain most of their money through begging, the lack of footfall over the lockdown has changed things drastically. For others, the empty streets seem scary and intimidating. At least some of the people who appear ‘homeless’ actually have their own tenancies. Fresh offers of emergency accommodation under the government response to the pandemic have met with mixed results. For some, there is a reluctance to sleep indoors, especially when a hostel may be a long way from the city centre and so from the most familiar form of support they know.

Our local police have explained the approach of ‘engage – explain – encourage – enforce’. Latterly, persistent gathering of groups has led to more enforcement, especially after assaults such as deliberately spitting or claiming to infect others with coronavirus.

Many in the ‘street culture cohort’ will be at extra risk from the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only is there an added risk of gathering in (ever-changing) groups, but they are also more likely to have underlying health conditions. A study for Crisis found the average age of death for those who die on the streets or while resident in homeless accommodation was 47 for men and 43 for women.1Bethan Thomas, Homelessness kills: an analysis of the mortality of homeless people in early twenty-first century England, University of Sheffield/Crisis, 2012, page vii. Seen in that context, it is perhaps not surprising that COVID-19 itself does not hold any new fears above the everyday grind. In such situations, the options for self-isolation and social distancing are unrealistic and fanciful.

And there is no really effective way to enforce it. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 SI No 350 provide for fixed-penalty notices – largely pointless for people without an enforceable income – and powers for police to ‘remove any person in the gathering [of three or more] to the place where they are living’ (reg 8(9)(c)). But police remain understaffed. The risk, therefore, continues, not just to people who may persist in gathering and sleeping out in the city centre, but also to those who come into contact with them.

While people are apparently choosing to sleep out despite having tenancies, and choosing to beg despite having access to help, choices are so much easier when you have a secure home or a sunny garden in which to relax. That lack of real choice affects us all. However, the fact that many thousands of rough sleepers now have accommodation of at least some sort is proof that drastic change to tackle rough sleeping can be achieved if the political will and resources are there.