The chief executive of Brighton Housing Trust (BHT) has called for homeless people and those supporting them to be included in priority groups to receive the covid vaccine.
Andy Winter has written to the three Brighton and Hove Members of Parliament – Peter Kyle, Caroline Lucas and Lloyd Russell-Moyle – asking them to urge Nadhim Zahawi, the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, to include homeless people in the priority groups for those to receive the covid vaccine, together with frontline workers who support them.
In his letter to the MPs, Mr Winter said: “People with a history of homelessness are old before their time.
“They have levels of frailty – including unintentional weight loss, feelings of exhaustion, weakness, slow walking speed and low levels of physical activity – comparable to 89-year-olds in the general population.
“Those with no home have an average of seven long-term health conditions, far higher than people in their nineties.
“People with no home die young. The mean age at death of homeless men is 46 years and just 43 years for homeless women as compared to the general population mean age of 76 years for men and 81 years for women.
“Just as residents of care homes are at higher clinical risk of severe disease, so are those who use single homeless hostels and other shared homeless accommodation for rough sleepers.
“Correspondingly, frontline homelessness support workers are at increased personal risk of exposure to infection with covid-19 and of transmitting that infection to susceptible and vulnerable people in shared homelessness accommodation.”
Mr Winter said that, throughout the pandemic, BHT’s First Base Day Centre had continued to support those new to rough sleeping, seeing between eight and 12 new rough sleepers every week.
In addition, BHT had provided temporary accommodation in Brighton and Hove for 222 people in 26 properties who would otherwise be homeless:
- 7 properties are in the Hove constituency accommodating 64 homeless people (excluding two care homes accommodating 14 people)
- 10 properties are in Brighton Pavilion accommodating 108 homeless people
- 9 properties are in Brighton Kemptown accommodating 50 homeless people
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In addition, BHT provides 312 homes in Brighton and Hove and 142 elsewhere in East Sussex.
Instead of making people Rich out of the Homeless situation(how much has been paid to QED in the nearly 8 years the container homes have been in place?) wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy a Hotel or Apartment block and convert it for short term accommodation.
If they have multiple medical conditions that put them at high risk they already will be in the priority group straight after those over 65 have been vaccinated.
This is the same group as people undergoing chemo with COPD etc so it is not exactly far down the list.
Getting the economy moving is a higher priority than them.
Have you seen the GDP loss? How about we vote out these hard right Tories who have completely mismanaged this situation. Even the tory pundits have turned against them.
Back to this, we can already see ARCH Healthcare are a vaccination site, so clearly homeless will be prioritised, Arch is a homeless surgery lol
“Getting the economy moving is a higher priority than them.” I mean that is just like your opinion, man…