Tributes are being paid to a homeless man who died after he collapsed outside Westminster Underground Station earlier this week.
Gyula Remes was found there by British Transport Police at half eleven on Tuesday night.
A woman who slept opposite the man told the BBC "He was the most gorgeous gentleman you would like to meet."
Flowers in Westminster tube station outside the entrance to Parliament in tribute to a homeless man who died early this morning pic.twitter.com/73AErR0Onq
— Harriet Line (@HarriLine) December 19, 2018
"It's killing me this, I can't cope with this, I really can't. I keep expecting him to walk around here."
She explained that Gyula had recently got a job and that he was expecting to be off the streets soon.
Political Correspondent for ITV News Carl Dinnen tweeted "A homeless man called Gyula died just outside our work this morning.
Many of us with jobs in Parliament will often have walked past him and others like him.
This page has been set up to donate to homeless charities in Gyula’s memory. Please give."
A homeless man called Gyula died just outside our work this morning.
Many of us with jobs in Parliament will often have walked past him and others like him.
This page has been set up to donate to homeless charities in Gyula’s memory. Please give. https://t.co/H2AnN6h8ul
— Carl Dinnen (@carldinnen) December 19, 2018
Dawn Hodgson is one of the women sleeping rough outside Westminster. Her friend Gyula Remes died on Tuesday night. She told me today: "I'm going to miss him. Why didn't he say goodbye."
Please donate to help the homeless, whatever you can spare. https://t.co/YhSFPzOtST pic.twitter.com/dU2TtTzBKG— Kate Proctor (@KateProctorES) December 20, 2018
The news comes as new figures reveal a rise of 24% in the number of homeless people who have died in England and Wales in the last five years.
Here at home, the latest Focus Ireland figures reveal that one family become homeless every 8 hours in Dublin alone last month.
Focus Ireland figures released in late November reported a total of 9,724 people experiencing homelessness.
This is an increase of 26 people on the figure for September of 9,698.
Focus Ireland highlighted that the new figures mean there has been a shocking 15% rise from the total of 8,492 people homeless in October 2017.
They said that while much good work is being done, the latest figures shows the Government has still failed to take a number of vital decisions required to ease the crisis.
The new figures from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government reveal that 3,725 of the total number homeless are children (in 1,709 families).
The Focus Ireland figures show 89 families with 183 children became newly homeless in Dublin in October.
The number of families with no previous history of homelessness is a record high for the month of October since records began.
Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan said:
“There is some positive news as we are managing to ensure that the number of people living in emergency accommodation is not rising as fast as it was last year. This have been achieved by the combined hard work of staff in Focus Ireland, other homeless organisations, local authorities and the DRHE. For the period January-September 2018, Focus Ireland managed to prevent 350 families from entering homelessness. We also now provide over 1,100 homes across the country.”
Mr Dennigan added:
“However, it is totally unacceptable and wrong that at the same time one family became homeless every 8 hours in October in Dublin alone. This again shows that there will be no solution to the homeless crisis until the Government takes more serious measures to prevent families losing their homes.”
Meanwhile, 16-year-old student Aimee Carty joined Aidan on the AOshow this morning.
She wrote and recorded a song recently called ‘Tell Me Your Story’.
The song was inspired by a homeless teenager she met when she was walking through Galway City.
"I think as we get older we get used to seeing people people on the street and it's easy to forget that they all have a story to tell", she said.
We're being reminded to do what we can to support homeless charities this Christmas.
You can find out more about Focus Ireland here and the Simon Community here.
