In the past decade, thousands of people have been plunged into homelessness and hundreds of homeless individuals have died on the streets, unaccounted for. Year-on-year rises in homelessness have become so bad that now, when ministers are asked why, they shrug like a petulant teenager asked why she hasn’t handed in her homework. And things are getting worse.

Mark Field calls homeless charity 'a magnet for undesirables' Read more

In the past month, the Guardian has reported on councils putting up walls to keep homeless people away from the one place they are allowed to be: the streets. Homelessness minister Heather Wheeler faced calls to step down after using “racist” language when referring to homeless people. And on Tuesday, it was reported that the Conservative MP Mark Field called a local homeless charity a “magnet for these undesirables to flood into Victoria”.

We might write this off as a singular case of a particularly nasty man – Field was, after all, suspended as a minister after frogmarching a peaceful protester out of a function. But his words were in response to a constituent who raised concerns about rising homelessness – seemingly not out of concern. They had written: “We have seen mothers grasping their children on their way to school while loud and inappropriate discussion takes place among homeless in the street … Many of them are not British.” When the Guardian wrote to Field’s office, he simply pointed out that it was probably factually correct that many homeless people aren’t British.

It would be unsurprising if a party that has presided over a hostile environment for migrants and soaring homelessness were to treat being homeless or foreign as if it were an insult in its own right. But there is a deeper problem with this language. In his book Less Than Human, the philosopher David Livingstone Smith shows us how dehumanisation starts, and how it ends. It begins by depicting groups of people as somewhat less than human – perhaps by referring to them as undesirables, tinkers or vagrants. The impact of this dehumanisation is emotional: conjuring up feelings of revulsion, fear, anger or hatred. The sort of feelings that make you want to clutch your children when you walk past; or that cause you to fear homeless people “flooding in” to an area – as if they were contagious, or an infection.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Conservative MP Mark Field called a local homeless shelter a ‘magnet for these undesirables to flood into Victoria’. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA Archive/PA Images

These feelings swiftly become the justification for cutting services for that group of people. They become the basis for extreme policies, that slowly but surely remove the right for them to exist. The sort of cuts that hit hardest in areas with the highest numbers of deaths among homeless people. The sort of policies that forbid homeless people from being in the vicinity of those who are trying to enjoy a nice party. The sort of policies that mean homeless people must constantly move from place to place – due to asbos, enforced removals and constant police surveillance. All raids on the right to congregate; to talk; to sleep; simply to eat.

They become the basis for policies that punish homeless people even when they are hidden away from the public, in their own encampments. Anything to get rid of them – whether by using loud music, fines or criminalisation. Dehumanisation becomes a lucrative, cross-party currency. Politicians begin to freely engage in it on Twitter – it becomes a means of ingratiating oneself, or getting laughs.

It would be lazy to turn this into a party political problem, when in reality it has become a public attitude. It manifests itself as people refusing to look someone in the eye when they ask for money; people who brush off those on the streets; or, worse, blame a homeless person for making them feel uncomfortable. This is the real goal of dehumanisation: to sow doubt in another’s right to be seen as human.

So why do we partake in it? In an interview, Smith said it makes us feel less guilty. “When we see people in such circumstances it throws us back on our own privilege. Even if we’re not some fancy person living in some fancy flat in London, the fact is we’re not on the street,” says Smith. Rather than be compassionate we become judgmental, because compassion is a price that most of us aren’t willing to pay.

“When you judge that they are inferior and defective, that relieves us from the burdens of guilt and the threat of compassion,” says Smith. “Because when you feel it, that means something needs to be done.”

Sadly, it seems it’s easier for us to pretend that homeless people aren’t people than to face our guilt that thousands will sleep tonight with no roof over their head in the fifth largest economy in the world.

• Poppy Noor is a Guardian journalist and columnist