The Guardian has a story this morning about the shocking rise in the number of people who are sleeping rough.

The government should be smashed for that rise alone. Slashing social security to the point where more and more people sleep outside in this climate is a crime against humanity in anyone’s book. Winter is freezing cold, especially here in the north west. Forcing people to sleep outside during it is murderous. Simple as that.

Point I wanted to make is that there are people who may not appear in these counts, because they have options some nights – if you can call them options – which means they have a bed or couch for that night. Their existences ain’t exactly great. They’re still street homeless. They still have appalling experiences. They are still out a lot in the freezing cold and can be out any minute in the freezing cold. Someone needs to take Theresa May to meet and count these people, and to rub her nose in a few realities.

I’m thinking of two guys in particular – James, 50 and Roy, 64 – who I’ve interviewed in Oldham. They’re both street homeless – but they’re not always on the street.

James, who I often meet with, regularly stays with his friend Vance, who was street homeless for years, but was finally found a council flat about two years ago. This arrangement works well sometimes and badly at others. Late last year, James had the shit kicked out of him – apparently by another guy who was staying at the flat. A roof often comes with considerable compromise.

It certainly did for Roy, 64, who I spoke with at length at Oldham foodbank recently. Roy was street homeless (at aged 64, if you don’t mind – a crime in itself), but sometimes stayed with a “friend” in Chadderton who charged Roy money out of his benefits to stay on the couch. He attended the foodbank that day in the hope that someone could help him find somewhere better to stay.

You see the point. When you spend a lot of time talking with people who are in and out of street homelessness, you talk with many people who are street homeless, but who are sometimes able make other arrangements that remove them from view. Doesn’t mean they’re having a brilliant time of it. I don’t know how many of these people do or don’t appear in rough sleeper counts – the Guardian article makes clear that criteria for counting rough sleepers is strict and only takes in people who are outside. Whatever. My point is that government needs to be strung up for creating this hidden rough sleeper nightmare as well. Like I say – people don’t know the half of it.

There’s much talk and fury (there should be more) about deaths related to benefit cuts: people dying after being found fit for work and people committing suicide following cuts to their benefits. There’s no doubt that current and one-time government ministers need to do jail time for this. And they will. There will most certainly be a reckoning.

There’s another sort of government destruction of people taking place that I want to raise again here.

It’s hard to quantify, but very obvious when you keep seeing it. A lot of people talk about it.

It’s the all-round annihilation of people’s health via the universal destruction of all the services they rely on – housing, care and income help in particular. The life expectancies of people in these situations MUST be adversely affected (to say the very least) by this all-round destruction. I really don’t care if anyone thinks such a statement is hysterical. It isn’t.

I know what I see. I keep interviewing people who are assaulted by government cuts on all fronts. Assault is not too strong a word.

People live in cheap rented housing which is disgusting and full of mould (I’ve posted pictures of some places I’ve been in below). This is the only housing that people can afford on LHA rates. I’ve interviewed people who live in tiny, grotty, falling-apart static caravans because they can’t afford anything else.

People’s care services have disappeared, because they can just about achieve the daily basics such as shopping and dressing on their own. They’re left to it as a result. No matter that they struggle with other aspects of running a home, such as keeping the tiny places they must rent clean and clear of mould (you can see that in the pictures below).

They are getting older, but must drag themselves to weekly jobcentre meetings to talk about work they’ll never get. They’re banned from jobcentres because they lose their tempers (perfectly understandably) when the DWP insists they apply for jobs that everyone knows they’re not eligible for. They’re thrown out of jobcentres when they try to drop in the sick notes their doctors must keep writing to cover people’s very obviously deteriorating health. The hours I’ve spent posting or delivering sick notes to the DWP and jobcentres for people who everyone at the jobcentres knows is neither fit nor eligible for work – I tell you what.

The “lucky” people are supported by collectives such as the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ group who really do make herculean efforts to keep things afloat for people. Other people just rot.

There’s no doubt in my mind that each of these problems hacks away at people’s health. Together and over time, these problems are dynamite. Because I see people again and again, I see the deterioration as it gathers pace over time – the weight loss, the worsening diabetes and respiratory health, and the decline in mobility. It’s neither hysterical nor naive to say that. I spend most of my time out talking with people who are in these situations.

People like me and plenty of others know what we see. We’re not the ones who are hysterical or in denial. Seriously. This is not exaggeration, or hysteria, or even the dreaded fake news. Fake news is the sort of thing you find in the average DWP press release – press releases which say, for example, that the DWP provides “tailored” services for sick and disabled people, even while jobcentre advisers are telling you that the DWP does nothing of the kind. I think that every mainstream outlet which publishes a DWP justification-for-policy statement at the moment is publishing fake news.

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Here are some pictures of places I’ve taken in the last few years.

You can’t tell me that the health of the people who lived in these places hasn’t been affected by these cramped, mouldly, filthy conditions. Anyone who says otherwise really is naive.

The man who lived in the first two places (he has learning difficulties and diabetes) has recently been found sheltered housing thanks to the efforts of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group.

Mould in one-room studio flats in London (kitchen, bed, living space all in one room):

Man in his 60s living in an old static caravan (Oldham):

I got a note from the DWP FOI yesterday to tell me a response to an FOI request that I sent last month about deductions from Universal Credit for tax credit debt would be delayed.

Of course – that’s happened before and not just to me. The point I making today is that I can’t get anything from the department on any front. The press office wouldn’t give me even a one line response to use about a fortnight ago for a question about private companies which do or don’t run Universal Credit contact centres (the department sent me a list I had and then I had to send another FOI. I couldn’t understand why the DWP wouldn’t just tell me who ran the contact centres).

And then there’s the fact that people’s requests for their own benefits paperwork go unanswered by the department.

Don’t like it.

Readers of this site will know I’ve written regularly about Maggie (name changed), a 41-year-old Northampton woman with a schizophrenia diagnosis.

Maggie has been sectioned in the past and has spent time in hospital.

Maggie receives the Employment and Support Allowance benefit. Up until recently, Maggie was in the ESA Support Group, which is the group for people with the highest support needs.

The DWP suddenly changed that about a month ago. Maggie was sent to a Maximus face-to-face assessment. She got a letter at the end of September which told her that her ESA claim had been downgraded. She was now in the ESA work related activity group (which means that she must attend jobcentre meetings about finding work) and her benefit money had been cut.

The DWP did not tell Maggie why it had suddenly decided she was able to look for work and live on less money. Her condition has not changed. It’s actually worsened since local mental health support services were cut. No reasons for this decision were included in the DWP’s letter.

Maggie rang the DWP to ask the department to send her a list of reasons for this decision to push her into the ESA WRAG group. The DWP said it would send her those reasons by post. That was three weeks ago. The list of reasons has not arrived. Maggie can’t properly challenge the decision to change her benefits without understanding exactly what it was about her condition that the DWP thought had changed.

However – the DWP HAS managed to send other post to Maggie in the last few weeks. The department sent her a letter which told her in no uncertain terms that she must turn up to her jobcentre for a work-related interview, or risk benefit sanctions. The DWP has no problem getting that sort of letter – ie a threatening letter – in the post. That part of the system works absolutely fine.

That letter about the work interview at the jobcentre arrived almost immediately after the letter which told Maggie that her benefit had been cut (I was actually speaking to Maggie on the phone about the first letter when the second one dropped through the door). Maggie had to attend that first work-focused interview at her jobcentre last week.

I am getting very, very sick of this. You think the sex scandals in parliament are bad. This sort of story is as bad and worse. This is cutting off support to people in great need and dropping them in it.

With one pen-stroke, David Gauke and the rest of the DWP’s geniuses cut money and support to someone who has previously been hospitalised because her mental health condition is so serious. Nobody gives a stuff about that, of course, or about the effects that such letters have on people whose are already struggling to keep things going. After cutting her money, all the DWP offered Maggie by way of “support” (ha) was a threat about attending a jobcentre meeting.

How do Gauke and his bureaucrats still get paychecks for running this intentionally disastrous system – the system that people in the greatest need in our society must use? The situation I’ve described above is exactly the sort of scenario that sets desperate and unsupported people up for suicide attempts – horrible threats, pressure and reduced money, and nobody to help (welfare support and advice in Northampton is hard to come by). It isn’t even subtle.

So much for government taking mental health seriously. Do me a favour.

I won’t be letting this one go.