HOUSING
SAFE AS HOUSES?
Joe Black’ s death in a London hostel wasn’ t just tragic, says Kevin Flemen. It was a painful reminder of the vital importance of appropriate housing provision
AndreyPopov / iStock
I
read Simon Hattenstone’ s article in the Guardian about the tragic death of Joe Black in a London hostel with mounting horror, frustration and sadness( https:// bit. ly / 4jsyR59).
Both the subject – and the journalist who wrote it – reminded me of my own journey in the world of drugs and housing and why it matters so much.
Many moons ago, I was a young outreach worker in central London, working with people sleeping rough in the West End. All too many of those young people were trapped in the drugs / homelessness catch 22 – need to be in treatment or off drugs to get into housing, but can’ t get into treatment or off drugs while unhoused.
The one treatment service that would take people who were homeless would only sign up the first three people in the queue on a Wednesday morning. For everyone else it was the roundabout of hostels where use was covert, ignored or detected and you were back on the streets. In this environment there was a grim but inevitable tally of drug-related deaths – overdoses, suicides, neglect, injuries.
Two deaths that changed my view of the work and the situation were those of two young men who were fatally stabbed by a local bar-worker when they slept rough in Soho. It affected me deeply at the time. The lads in question were Big Issue vendors, and Simon Hattenstone was, at the time, a journalist there, learning his trade. He wrote a piece about their lives and death after they were killed. I have a clipping of it still – the only published memorialisation of two lives cut short.
10 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • APRIL 2025 WWW. DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS. COM