Nobody should have to sleep rough in Oxford (Report, 1 February), and Oxford city council and our partners – including Homeless Oxfordshire – are doing more than ever to provide accommodation and support. There are 212 beds for rough sleepers this winter, including 39 beds funded by the temporary rough sleeper initiative, and a new multi-agency hub getting people off the streets more quickly. From next winter, we aim to create a new assessment centre that will provide winter-long emergency accommodation for rough sleepers.
The Office for National Statistics says the average age of death for a homeless person is 44 for men and 42 for women, compared with 76 and 81 in the general population. But nobody needs to die on the streets in Oxford during periods of freezing winter weather, when we activate our severe weather emergency protocol and offer emergency beds to any rough sleeper in our city.
It is right to highlight the lack of drug, alcohol and mental health support that many rough sleepers need to successfully rebuild their lives, and this is a direct consequence of austerity. Since 2010, Oxfordshire county council has had to make more than £300m in cuts that include many of these services – and the consequences are all too evident on our streets. It is a vicious cycle, as it takes more than a roof to end homelessness, and people remain on the streets because of the lack of other support needed to engage with us and come inside.
Councillor Linda Smith
Deputy leader Oxford city council and board member for leisure and housing
• The death of Sharron Maasz, though the subject of a coroner’s inquest, would probably otherwise have passed unnoticed. I knew Sharron well. I taught her when I was head of her middle school. Her father, a single parent, was a friend and was for a number of years a governor. Sharron was a bright, lively and sensitive girl. She was a keen cyclist and an all-round athlete. This may be her only obituary.
She is quoted as saying: “I just want to get my life sorted … I always wanted to get clean.”
She didn’t get sorted or clean. Instead, she died in a short-term home, a last refuge provided for those in desperate need. She had been living alone on the freezing streets of our leading university city.
I do not have solutions. I only know that the dreams that Sharron, a lovely child, had until her death, have perished in the wreckage of an austerity programme that has literally killed her and her like.
Roger Pepworth
Headteacher, Marston middle school, Oxford 1983-1991
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