Dear Mr Brokenshire,

I am writing this in a cheap hotel room. You see, I’ve been homeless for a while and this room is a Christmas gift to myself. More than I can afford, it’s a sanctuary; a brief respite from the merry-go-round of moving from one temporary place to the next. And I’m one of the lucky ones. On Wednesday night a homeless man died on the street after collapsing outside parliament. His death came on the eve of an announcement that deaths among homeless people had risen by 24% over the past five years to almost 600.

You recently stated that rising homelessness is not caused by your government’s policies. You claim street sleepers are frequently non-UK nationals, or there through family breakdown and substance abuse. I can assure you that none of your listed reasons apply to me. I am not an addict, chaotic, or what you dog-whistlingly refer to as a “non-UK national”. The man who died was – does that make it OK? Across the UK there are numerous reasons for homelessness. I was forced to leave a private rented flat after the delightful owner raised the rent by 36% (before the law that would have prevented this was introduced in Scotland) alongside decisions made by my local council, Glasgow.

My kind friends Harrie and Dan collected my belongings and carried them up six sets of stairs, because I couldn’t (Harrie loaned me her spare room) since when I have also been house-sitting, or more recently using my friend Sarah’s mostly empty flat, and Michelle and James’ spare room. Hardly Cathy Come Home, I know, but I can’t begin to explain how demoralising, destabilising, and just plain horrible it has been. I rely on favours, with all my belongings in storage. I am smart, educated and articulate, with generous friends. As a former welfare rights adviser, I know my way around the system. Yet here I am.

Assumptions about homeless people are generally wrong, as are your own vastly misinformed claims. Know this, Mr Brokenshire: the most common cause of homelessness is a private tenancy ending, under notorious S.21 no-fault evictions, as campaigned against by the excellent Generation Rent. More recently the toxic labyrinthine farce that is universal credit has piled on more misery. Prejudice is widespread, and many homeless people work, a fact seemingly lost on the woman I spoke to at the homeless office in Glasgow, who addressed me as if I were a stubborn toddler.

You can’t ignore the fact that precarious, poorly paid employment, paired with its toxic twin, insecure expensive housing, is a disastrous brew propelling people on to the streets or, for the relatively fortunate, sofa surfing. Add to that chronic ill-health or mental illness and the inevitable result is roofless homelessness, since people in this position are undesirable to private landlords. And that’s without mentioning the shining stars of your policies: right-to-buy, the benefit cap, the “hostile environment”, austerity, a lack of social housing and a broken private rented sector. There are more, but I don’t have enough space.

My situation was caused by unbending bureaucracy, as is probably true of the poor souls you must see on your way to the Houses of Parliament. Glasgow city council finance department, citing a need to combat an imagined fraud, blithely used social media to reach erroneous conclusions on my income then ended a housing benefit claim. And despite being informed of my multiple sclerosis (which is worsened by stress) it did not identify me as vulnerable during this hellish process. They recanted and paid arrears one week after I had moved out.

Throughout, I benefited from forthright interventions from my MP, Alison Thewliss, and only when a friend’s partner, councillor Matt Kerr, intervened, and metaphorically banged his fist on the table did the council act (and it’s ongoing). Few people enjoy such strong support.

If I can fall foul of bureaucracy and low pay and end up homeless, how are people more damaged, less able and articulate than I am going to survive? The idea of blaming not the brutal domino effect of Tory policies, but instead the very victims of homelessness for their own plight, is a ludicrous feat of treacherous obfuscation and cynical misdirection. Please understand; if a homeless person is not a drug user, being condemned to cold hard streets, where tents are a luxury, it should not be that surprising that they self-medicate to cope. Drugs are the result, not the cause of homelessness, Mr Brokenshire.

The cause is your government.

• Penny Anderson is a writer and artist