THE story of a homeless man who took his own life, as confirmed at an inquest reported in the Worcester News yesterday, will strike almost any humane person as unbearably sad.

Remigiusz Boczarski, who was known to residents of Malvern Wells for sleeping in a disused bus shelter there, was found dead close to a nearby quarry last October, having been suffering from anxiety and stress, as well as physical health problems.

A number of agencies that deal with homelessness had been called in to assist Mr Boczarski with his problems, but to no avail.

The whole issue, along with the death of another homeless man, Joby Sparrey, found in a Malvern shop doorway a few months later, raises the question of whether society is doing enough to help people who are in this position.

Although coroner David Reid specifically made no criticism of the agencies involved in Mr Boczarski’s case, and spoke very highly of Wells resident Sandra Hinton, who helped him on her own initiative, we can legitimately ask if society as a whole is really pulling out all the stops to help the homeless.

First of all, it is not a matter that can be solved simply, by increasing the pace of house-building. The homeless, in the main, are not on the streets because of a lack of accommodation in the country as a whole, but because of the lack of resources to address the various issues they face, which overwhelmingly include mental health issues and problems with substance abuse.

Without tackling these problems, simply providing beds in hostels won’t provide a solution.

In the old days, people in that position were frequently housed in asylums, such as the one that used to exist at Powick.

The term “asylum” has always denoted a place of safety, and despite documented abuses at such places, there can be little doubt that they provided a haven for those who had problems living in mainstream society.

“Care in the Community” was presented in the Eighties as an act of liberation, a humane alternative to incarceration in mental hospitals, but as time goes on, increasingly cynical observers have wondered if it was just a disguised attempt to pass the buck from the National Health Service on to social services and private charity.

It’s not a problem that can be solved at any small cost.