The reporting project that became this book began with a man called Tony, who froze to death in December 2017 in the back garden of the home in Lowestoft from which he had been evicted, bankrupt, a few months before. Learning of Tony’s story, Maeve McClenaghan began what became an 18-month project to record every instance in the UK of a person dying while homeless.
In 2018, according to the charity Crisis, there were around 12,000 people sleeping rough in England. A further 276,100 people were living in temporary accommodation, sofa-surfing with family and friends, or in tents, cars or on public transport. Even the government’s own, lower, estimates were scandalous, with 4,751 rough sleepers representing an increase of 169% on the year that David Cameron’s Conservative government came to power. In No Fixed Abode, McClenaghan sets out in meticulously researched detail the consequences of this crisis for its most marginalised victims.
McClenaghan discovered that data about deaths-while-homeless are not recorded centrally by any government body. In the early chapters we follow her as she gathers incomplete information. Some volunteers furnish the names and details of people they have worked with, and one GP in Brighton who runs a clinic for homeless people has been keeping a list of dead patients since 2011. (When McClenaghan visited him in spring 2018, he had recorded seven names in the previous five months.) Realising she needed more resources, she set up “Dying Homeless”, a collaboration with her colleagues at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and local reporters around the country.
McClenaghan, the host of the engaging podcast The Tip Off, in which she interviews journalists about how they track down their biggest stories. She writes the book in the same vein and, while some details feel unnecessary, the first person framing in the book leads to moving and revealing set piece scenes. She attends more than one funeral. At an eviction hearing for homeless people squatting in a former GP’s surgery in Greater Manchester, the lawyer for the landlord – NHS Properties Services Ltd – is crisp and matter of fact. “This is a straightforward claim. We have an immediate right to possession. They are trespassers in the traditional sense.” The judge approves the eviction.
McClenaghan does a good job of bringing to life the stories of the people she describes, using interviews with support workers to build rounded portraits of people in crisis. In doing so she identifies both long-term untreated issues such as grief, PTSD and addiction, and short-term inflection points. The importance of care – both sustained and professional, and amateur and spontaneous – is obvious, particularly in its frequent absence. Even in the midst of crisis there is contingency, as there was for David Tovey, who was about to overdose before the intervention of a park warden. Tovey recovered and eventually flourished – he is now working as a professional artist – but crucially he did so living in his own flat, available only because he is a military veteran.
McClenaghan and her colleagues recorded 449 deaths in 2018. The ages of those who died ranged from 18 to 94, and they died in doorways, under bridges, in tents, in squats, in hospitals. No one should be surprised that this is often the consequence of decisions made since 2010 by the government, and by local councils operating under budget constraints imposed by central government. Brighton and Hove council, for instance, cut funding for homelessness services by a third from 2010-11 to 2018-19. In Brighton time spent sleeping rough locally does not count towards the “local connection” required for eligibility for social housing. Only those who have had a recent tenancy locally are eligible for support. This is against the government’s Homelessness Code of Guidance, but the guidance is not binding.
Homelessness is part of a broader housing crisis. The south London activist group Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth report countless examples of members who are legally homeless because they live in severely overcrowded conditions – a family of five in one room, for instance – being refused support by obstructive, bullying officials from local councils. “It’s like the housing crisis is being blamed on its victims,” according to activist Izzy Köksal.
It does not have to be like this. “The solution feels so large and yet so simple that it seems almost laughable to write it down,” McClenaghan states. “Reverse the decimating austerity cuts of the past decade.” We should go further though: reversing what is in social housing terms an austerity regime spanning 40 years. With a wave of Covid-19 related evictions merely deferred for now, a housing politics which centres on the right of every person to be safely and securely housed is more urgent than ever.
• No Fixed Abode: Life and Death Among the UK’s Forgotten Homeless is published by Picador (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
