Have the Tory members of Gloucester city council been busy reading George Orwell’s 1984 in their book club recently?

It seems someone has read the bit at the back where Orwell describes how the political language, Newspeak – with its restricted grammar and limited vocabulary – is designed to distort how people think and control public attitudes. Posters were put up in Gloucester showing someone wearing a hoodie, under the headline of “Are you really helping homeless people?”, suggesting that people sleeping rough are not homeless, but “in accommodation, receiving support and benefits”. This sinister use of Newspeak tells the upstanding citizenry to stop feeling bad about not helping those in need, under the pretence of educating and informing. It even offered a subtle sense of justification that – weirdly – help isn’t really help at all. That’s not Newspeak, it’s doublespeak. Orwell was writing about a totalitarian state. We should be worried.

So that’s the propaganda. What about the fact?

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During the weeks I spent listening to and recording homeless people in London – first-hand accounts of their lives are in my book Four Feet Under – I met a man called Benji who said, “Come on, why are we homeless, for God’s sake? Yeah, I’m going to chuck all my gear away, empty my bank account and give it to somebody and sleep on the street. Sure. Right, I’m going to do that!”

No one in their right mind thinks it’s a clever scam to sit on a freezing pavement suffering the humiliation of asking people for a few coins. And frankly, there are many people out there who are seriously mentally ill and are chaotically struggling to stay alive. And if there are scammers? So what? They would be such an insanely tiny percentage that they are of no interest or relevance to the big picture: why are our streets starting to look like Hogarth sketches?

Not once did I meet a single person who likes begging. Most were mortified. Some flat out refused to do it. It is a horrible part of a horrible life, lived out in the open, scrutinised and judged. Hunger, loneliness, physical illness, being beaten up, sometimes raped or set alight are the diet of the homeless. But you can’t see all this under the tatty clothes and worn faces, down there somewhere at knee level. You certainly won’t see it in the poster with the faceless, hoodied man – he is meant to radiate menace.

Homelessness is not a lifestyle choice of the criminal classes, despite efforts to convince you otherwise. It is barely a life at all.

People are homeless for lots of reasons – fleeing domestic violence or sexual abuse, loss of a job and a partner often at the same time, leaving the care system with scant resources and being severely mental ill – to name a few.

Play Video 1:07 'Homelessness caused me pain, stress and anger' – video

Lots of people just can’t manage life and when it falls apart, so do they.

Without exception, the huge range of people I had the joy of spending time with were in terrible pain. No one was having fun living like this and all were clinging desperately to the idea that it might, just might, stop and life would get better.

The poster used a crude caricature of a homeless person feeding the notion that a person who is faceless is a non-person. I can’t tell you how many homeless people I met who said the worst thing of all was knowing you were invisible, that you didn’t really exist at all.

Now it’s no longer enough to blame them for their plight – we must criminalise them too. Antisocial behaviour orders and a panoply of other bits of nasty legislation all conspire to make homelessness appear villainous and dishonest.

Should you give them money? Absolutely.

They need it – and assuming you are not the person who will solve homelessness with a click of your fingers – it’s the least you can do. Sleeping bags, hot food and painkillers are also welcome. This idea that homeless people “can’t be trusted” with the money you give is a wicked get-out. They are not children. They are not morons. They are homeless and they are sad. Many need medical and psychiatric help. If all this was available – as that monstrous poster suggests – then there would not be a homelessness problem in the first place. Your money will be spent on food, newspapers, coffees and toiletries. The majority try to beg enough to get a hostel for the night (anywhere up to £20-odd a night.) Some – but by no means all – will spend it on alcohol or drugs.

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It’s this that seems to bother some people. Drug use isn’t a sign of moral failure or craven attitudes. The people I met who took class A drugs had very little choice. Without a daily hit (which costs money) they will, within hours, become extremely ill: vomiting, diarrhoea and excruciating muscle spasms are just some of what they would endure, and having diarrhoea in the middle of Oxford Street isn’t an option for most people. And believe me, after a few cold days sitting out in the cold and damp doing my “research”, I barely made it through the front door in the evening before pouring a very large gin. I did that every night I got home. For people living on the street, booze can help dilute the shame and embarrassment of begging.

So let’s put drink and drugs to one side. It’s a diversion, worthy of Orwell’s fictional Oceanian government. If our government really gave a damn they would have provided the services to help the vast numbers who need it and – crucially – would be creating a society that produced fewer people in this state of total despair and ruin. Not one based on greed, selling off social housing stock and cutting benefits and mental health provision. And certainly not one that tells us it is OK not to help the needy.

That Gloucester poster heralds the destruction of the innate sense of decency that I believe most of us share. Don’t let that happen.

• Tamsen Courtenay is the author of Four Feet Under (Unbound), a collection of 30 stories of homeless people in their own words