Autumn / Winter2013 From

Beth Orton | Dens | Bill Drummond | Bob Stanley George Clarke | Stella Vine | Bob & Roberta Smith | Grimspound

A magazine about where we live

2 here 3here

What’s in Here? 4 Dens: our first shelters6 The social cost of homelessness7 George Clarke: the Restoration Man on helping save Britain’s homes 8 Lifeline: manning Shelter’s phones 10 How Shelter have helped 12 If you could change one thing about housing, what would it be?14 Bill Drummond on the ’60s, the Stones and Shelter18 The stressed and the rest… How environment shapes our ideas of home 20 Share and share alike: when did renting became such a bizarre assault course?24 Songs from a room: Beth Orton26 Bob & Roberta Smith: how to be a good landlord (and why you should)30 The housing crisis explained34 Poverty on the menu: Miss South reflects on the realities of hostel cookery 36 The rise of community building39 George the Poet: estate of the nation40 Vive la différence? Renting in Europe42 Stella Vine: ‘I made art in a van’44 The impact of ‘Cathy Come Home’ 46 Shelter calender 2013-14 48 We used to live Here: Grimspound50 The house I grew up in: Bob Stanley

ContributorsEditor Emma WarrenDeputy editor Chris WaywellDesign James QuailEditorial assistant Kieran YatesArt assistant Andre ‘Zoom’ AndersonWriters Kevin Braddock, Ross Clark,

Bill Drummond, Jimmy Ewing, Hannah Fearn, Lynsey Hanley, Phil Hoad, Serena Kutchinsky, Kate Murray, Pete Paphides, Jude Rodgers, Miss South, Ossian Ward, Roy Wilkinson, Robbie Wojchiechowski, Kieran Yates, Steve Yates

Cover Shaw & Shaw PhotographyPhotography Isy & Leigh Anderson,

Dominic Brandi, Travis Hodges, Paul Moffat, Jo Metson Scott

Illustrations Emma Kelly, Eve Lloyd Knight, Joël Penkman, David SparshottOriginal art Bob & Roberta Smith

Created by SM.O.KE CREATIVES for Shelter. The views contained herein are those of contributors and not of the editors, publishers or of Shelter. All content within this publication is owned by Shelter and may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of Shelter.

ere is a new magazine exclusive to Shelter supporters. It’s our way of

saying thank you for supporting Shelter and to keep you informed about our work and about the world of housing. After all, where we live is as universal as food or love. We’ve asked some of the best writers in the country to share their thoughts and opinions on this vast subject. There are as many views on housing as there are houses and the words you’ll read in here come from individuals with a range of experiences and opinions. Some are provocative, some are just thought-provoking. Some relate directly to Shelter’s core purpose, some take an unexpected detour. That’s why you’ll find Bill Drummond writing about seeing the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in 1969, or Beth Orton talking about the songs that remind her of home. Housing affects everything.

Welcome to the first edition of Here.

We’d love to know what you think about it. Send us a letter for next issue to here@shelter.org.uk or pop it in the post to 88 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HU.

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Perfect denThe first pulse of homebuilding is a den,

whether that’s sheets over chairs or a gorgeous woodland scrabble of twigs and branches

Words: Kevin Braddock

n their book ‘Edgelands’, a lyrical survey of those liminal zones that are neither rural nor urban, poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts described these mythic and furtive dwellings. ‘A teepee-like vertical frame has been attempted using pliant

elder branches… the floor has been carpeted with an offcut of ratty Axminster… a red plastic milk crate, partially melted in one corner from the heat of a fire… where a boy is studying a punished copy of Mayfair, pulled from a hedge full of empty vodka bottles in a lay-by.’

The magic of the dens evoked by the poets remains powerful. It’s in the nature of children to hide, to run away and create interior spaces; it’s a joy to create refuges, and there’s a delight in feeling hunted even when one isn’t being hunted, apart from by irascible parents. When you’re small it’s enough to be inside a sheet suspended over a clothes horse, to repurpose some boxes into a maze, or to hide behind a sheet of corrugated iron against a garage wall. When you’re older, a domelike space in a hedge or a thicket becomes home. At the age of Scouts and Guides, den-building becomes more instrumental than improvised, with blueprints for snow and forest dens provided by Brian Hildreth’s ‘How to Survive’ (Puffin Books, 1976). By the time you reach Glastonbury seniority, the tendency becomes baroque, expressed in complex palaces of tarp, canvas and ripstop nylon (by the way, tents are capitalism’s commoditised roll-out of the instinct). But it always remains about escape and shutting out: my friend Greg and I once sank a coffin-like cask into a drained pond in my parents’ garden, planning to dig all the way to Greg’s garden, a couple of doors up

the road, like Charles Bronson’s Tunnel King. We never made it. Still, it was a grand, brilliant plan and pointed to the other side of the den-building impulse: tunnelling, which is another metaphor for getting away from something. One of the paradoxes of dens is that the urge to build them outlasts youth, the nominal den-building age: the folky vogue for competitive shed furnishing, for designer treehouses with lacquered MDF struts and walls, and for rooftop hideaways and so on bespeaks an affluent, middle-aged demographic’s need to escape from it all without straying too far from home, or denying themselves creature comforts like kettles and iPad chargers. All constructions are protective in some form, but temporary in the long span of history. Dens are the most temporary – some only may only last the hour or two between teatime and bedtime – and yet also, in one sense, the most psychologically protective. And certainly, if only for a short time, the comfiest.

AnnetteLeaves Green Mid-1970s

Alex and friendBristol 1991

Jimmy (and Jamie the bear)Liverpool2013

Sonny, Daisy and LolaForest of Dean February 2013

EddEpworth Late 1980s

Tille and CameronWrotham 2013

Caitlin and OwenDevon

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BérBerlin 1997

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Kevin Braddock is contributing editor at Esquire

A decade of changeOver the last ten years there’s been a migration of families

into the private rental sector. It’s expensive and often insecure, presenting real problems for parents and children.

We break down the facts

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You’ve been obsessed with buildings since childhood. What was the trigger? ‘It was my granddad: he was a builder. When I was six or seven, my uncle would take us to these building sites and I’d hang out with him on giant diggers and scrapers. So when a lot of other kids would mess around with Tonka toys, I was sitting in the real things.’

Was there one particular building that made you think, ‘I want to build something like that’? ‘Once you spend time on sites you look at the world around you a bit more. But Durham Cathedral: I remember being taken there when I was eight or nine, thinking how on earth did someone design and build this nearly 1,000 years ago, when people were living in mud huts, so it’s still standing today? I’m not religious, but buildings have a huge impact on people’s lives in a spiritual way.’

Housing is one of life’s bare necessities, but we’re obsessed with price and investment. ‘The Great British Property Scandal’ looked at empty homes. Is this where you think the debate should be? ‘It shouldn’t be about empty homes or new homes, but affordable homes. That’s the UK crisis. Prices are just plucked out of the air; it’s insane. Why is property not directly connected to earnings? If your parents have to step in and help kids get a roof over their heads, that’s not a real market, it’s a messed-up model. I launched that campaign because I couldn’t understand why we had empty

houses in areas of need. Come up with a clever refurbishment strategy for Victorian terraced houses and students and young people would rip your arm off for one of them.’

Why did you get involved with Shelter? ‘It took me all of about 0.1 seconds to say yes. We’re supposed to be a developed nation, so why have we got 80,000-odd children in awful temporary accommodation across Britain affecting their education and sometimes their health? I’m not bothered by iconic architecture. I’m passionate about homes. Your house is another member of your family.’

What does your work as a Shelter ambassador involve? ‘Anything. I get messages out on Twitter about new statistics, how things are getting worse rather than better. I did a reading in Trafalgar Square at Christmas. I’m running the Great North Run in September. If I can use my position, then I’ll do it.’

For ‘Amazing Spaces’ you restored a beautiful ’70s caravan and made it into a modern living space. Now you’ve auctioned it off for a weekend, with all the money going to Shelter. What’s the response been like? ‘I don’t normally rent my caravan out, I just use it for friends and family, but we’ve made about £500 for Shelter. I’ll be doing it again next year, but for a week, and it’ll be a raffle so anyone can stick in a fiver and have a chance of winning.’

Architect in the House gives ordinary people access to professionals in return for a small donation to Shelter. What’s the aim of the campaign? ‘A lot of people want to do something to their home but don’t know how much it’ll cost them with architects’ fees. For a nominal donation, an architect will come round your house for an hour. The architects get nothing out of it. It’s about how people live. The punters go, “I never realised my home could be so great.” And it’s only cost them £45 to find out.’

What’s the greatest challenge for housing facing this and future governments? ‘We’ve got to solve the affordable homes crisis: it’s frightening. We’ve got a massive demand and a huge lack of supply, so the stuff we build is overpriced. We’ve got huge decisions to make about what homes we build and where. But if we don’t, the crisis is going to get worse.’

What do you see Shelter’s role as being in ten years’ time? ‘The way it does things might change, but its role won’t: getting people into decent homes with long-term stability. Not some temp rent for six months, or substandard home that’s going to affect them and their kids. But good, long-term, affordable, stable communities where people feel settled. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Amazing Spaces’ returns to Channel 4 in the autumn

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‘Your house is another member of your family’

TV architect George Clarke talks Tonka toys, cathedrals and mud huts with Steve Yates

More than one in five families now live in private rented accommodation - more than twice the proportion of ten years ago.

The private rented sector has grown by 80% over the last decade.

Private renting is the most expensive form of housing, £23 a week more

expensive than most mortgages and £81 a week more expensive

than social housing.

The proportion of homeless acceptances due to the end of an assured short-hold tenancy has doubled over the last four years.

2002

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68%

23.4%

8%21.2%

18.2%60.6%

Sources: DOE Labour Force Survey Housing Trailer, Communities & Local Government, Survey of English Housing 1993/4 to 2010/11, DCLG English Housing Survey

Source: English Housing Survey

Source: English Housing Survey

Source: English Housing Survey

Shelter is campaigning for better housing for all. To find out more, and to join the campaigns visit www.shelter.org.uk/campaigns

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Life on the lineShelter’s Helpline in Sheffield dealt with over 80,000

calls and emails last year. Advisor Bekki Heaton describes the sharp end of the housing crisis

Interview: Serena Kutchinsky. Portrait: Paul Moffat

helter runs a free, national telephone advice service that helps people with problems as diverse as finding a place

to stay, handling rent arrears and family breakdowns. Based in Sheffield, the helpline received 83,000 calls and emails last year and is staffed by around 40 trained housing advisors. Bekki Heaton, 32, who has worked as a helpline operator for the past two years, explains what makes her job special.

I was legally homeless at 16. Family problems left me in a desperate position with nowhere to live and I ended up sofa surfing for six months. Later I lived in some terrible flats, including one where a faulty boiler would pour hot water through the ceiling into the living room every night. Like many of the callers that I deal with, I didn’t have much knowledge of my legal rights. That experience helped inspire me to apply for this job.

My first call was a terrifying experience. The caller was a 17-year-old girl who was pregnant and was being refused housing by the council. She didn’t have anywhere else to turn. I had to call the council on her behalf. Thankfully, there was a happy ending – the council found her somewhere to stay.

Our target is to do 17 calls a day. It’s intense. You deal with one emotional situation, have a breather, and then move on to the next. We are expected to average about 23 minutes per call. In reality some require an hour or more, while others only last five minutes. But we are a helpline and we have to make sure we’re reaching as many people as possible.

It can be hard not to sound patronising. I try to avoid saying ‘I’m sorry to hear that’: it’s the sort of meaningless phrase you get from your gas supplier when you call to complain about being overcharged. I think tone of voice is more important than the actual words you use. It’s tricky because

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You deal with one emotional situation,

have a breather, and then move on to the next

I am always genuinely sorry to hear about someone having a hard time. I try to help people deal with the practical side of their problem, which gives them space to deal with the emotional aspect.

You need to be intelligent to do this job. There are a lot of complicated things to learn with housing law and you need to cover all aspects of the legislation. Empathy, rather than sympathy, and patience are also important, the latter for listening to callers who need to talk that little bit longer and accepting it takes time to settle into the job.

I found myself in tears recently. I took a call from a young girl who I felt might be at risk of serious abuse in the home. I was able to get in touch with social services in her area and alert them to the situation. They helped her literally escape from her home. Normally, we don’t find out much after we pass the case on but I did get a call back from social services to say they had collected her. It was an emotional moment.

The ‘Bedroom Tax’ is a big issue. People are worried about falling behind on their rent and want to know how to stop themselves from being evicted. These people have so little money they have to decide between feeding their children and paying the rent.

A caller slammed the phone down once. He called back to apologise a few days later.

He suffered from mental health issues and other disabilities that were exacerbated by the noise his neighbours made. Unfortunately, the noise wasn’t malicious – the block of flats was just poorly designed. At first you question what you did to make the caller so angry, but later I realised it wasn’t my fault.

Male callers tend to be more emotional about break-ups. The majority of those calls come in January, after relationship issues have come to a head over Christmas. Most people expect it to be the other way around. My theory is that women usually have the kids with them and are forced to focus on practical things, whereas the men can feel isolated and alone.

It’s hard not to take the job home with you. I often find myself in the pub with friends talking about housing law. They find it really interesting and always ask what cases I’ve dealt with that day. I have to be careful to protect people’s anonymity. Friends increasingly ask my advice on their own housing issues such as how to deal with a difficult landlord.

I met my boyfriend at work. We’ve been together for a year and live together too. At the moment we have quite similar shifts, but there was a time when they kept clashing. The support he gives me is a big help – it’s nice to be reassured that you gave the right advice to someone in need.

The happy endings make it all worthwhile. I can hear the smile on people’s faces when their problems are solved. Those moments help counteract all the doom and gloom. There are a lot of cases where people ring up in an emotional state convinced that all is lost and I can give them hope.

Serena Kutchinsky is the digital editor of Prospect Magazine

Helpline: 0808 800 4444, shelter.org.uk

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These are real people Shelter have helped. To help even more people, go to shelter.org.uk/donatehere

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Success storiesMillions of people helped. Thousands of new supporters.

And thirty-one new shops. Here’s a taste of some of our achievements last year

We’re piloting our new hub approach in Birmingham so that people can get the help they need on everything from housing and debt through to family and legal support – all in one building. In Scotland we have hubs in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. We also launched the Safe and Sound project in Dundee to help young people facing homelessness

In Scotland, after ten years of campaigning and planning, the 2012 Homeless Commitment became a reality. This makes Scotland the first nation in the world to give every unintentionally homeless person the right to a home

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Over 3.5m people received help from Shelter in 2012/13,through our advice and support network of services

We opened over thirty new shops across the country. Thank you!

Evict Rogue Landlords has been one of our most successful campaigns in England. Because of our campaigning last year, successful prosecutions of rogue landlords rose by 77%

Our online tenancy deposit checker, which allows you to check if your money is protected in a government-backed tenancy deposit scheme, has been used by more than 50,000 people

Our amazing supporters donated more than £26m

£26m+Over 64,000 new supporters joined us this year on our mission to help more people

Hear HereWe went to South Yorkshire to ask people

a simple question: what’s the one thing you’d change about housing in this country?

Interviews: Jimmy Ewing. Photography: Isy & Leigh Anderson

Matt I don’t really have a problem: I have a decent job and I rent a house. I do want to get on the property ladder, but I have a friend who has had difficulty as it’s not easy trying to get a mortgage. If I could change one thing it would be to make it easier to get on the property ladder.

Tamsin My sister is a lawyer and she has been saving for ten years to buy a house, so there isn’t much hope for me. I’d make it easier to buy.

Jimmy Ewing is a Leeds-based radio producer for the BBC and the Prison Radio Association

Jane I have a home and don’t have an issue with housing but my daughter lives with me and when she gets older I am not going to be in a position where I can help her out with buying a house. I think it needs to be easier for young people to get housing.

Sowjanya I have my own house. We have had it for seven years and it hasn’t increased in value since we bought it. We want to sell but there aren’t enough people that want to buy my house. I blame the recession. If I could change one thing it would be to improve the housing market.

Ben I’m currently living with my parents. I would like to move out; my parents would like me to move out too and I am employed, but it’s just too expensive.

Clare I’m 22 years old. I have two children and I currently live with family as I’m looking for accommodation. I have been waiting for a few months now and it’s not safe living where I am at the moment. I’ve had some very serious threats and wish I had my own place where I feel safe for my children and myself. If I could change one thing about housing in the UK it would be for people to listen to what I have to say as nobody seems to take me seriously.

Sue Unfortunately I lost my ex-husband last week. He lived in Devon with my daughter. I am going to have to move down to Devon to take care of my daughter, but I don’t know how I am going to do it. I don’t have the money to make the move and find housing just like that. If I could change one thing about housing in the UK then it would be to make things easier and clearer for people in my situation.

Paul I am currently homeless. Luckily I have friends that let me stay on their sofas. I have been to prison and have been trying to get housing since I got out. People keep telling me that I am not a priority but I need somewhere to live. I have a job and I am trying to do the right thing but other people seem to be getting housed before me. I would make everything fair and consider everyone.

Simbi I have a son who is looking to rent at the moment but he is finding it difficult so I would make it easier for young people to get housing.

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Cathy goes to Corby

Bill Drummond sold over a million records as one half of the KLF. Since then he’s written books and made provocative, humane art involving posters, shoe-shining and a choir called The17. He tells us

about the first time he heard about Shelter

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July 5 1969

s Yun and I trudged across Hyde Park, away from the dull and plodding noise and towards Marble Arch and the long journey

back home to Corby, our conversation was about how boring the Rolling Stones had been. I say ‘had been’ but in fact the Rolling Stones had not yet finished their set, the dull and plodding noise being their rendition of ‘Love in Vain’ getting more muffled with distance. But something else was going on in my just-turned-16 head at the same time. It was the word ‘released’, and it was going around and around. ‘Any day now Any day now I shall be released…’

I hoped that Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight festival the following month was going to be better. I had already bought a ticket. Charities were boring things to do with churches, or starving children in India. They were what teachers talked about in assembly. So how come there were these people at this free Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park handing out leaflets about a charity called Release, or Released or something? I read the leaflet. It seemed to be a charity about taking drugs. Rock stars took drugs, ordinary people like us from Corby didn’t. I mean, we all knew the Rolling

Stones took drugs. And rumour was already rife that Brian Jones, who had only died a couple of days earlier, had done so cos he took drugs. I didn’t know what drugs did or how you took them. Anyway, how come there was this charity wanting us to donate our money to buy drugs for rock stars? Yun didn’t know either. He thought it might be a con trick and maybe we should set up our own charity. The person that gave me the leaflet said something about a Caroline Coon, like I should know. ‘Yun, you heard of Caroline Coon?’ ‘No. Why?’ ‘The people handing out the leaflets kept talking about her.’ ‘Maybe Mick Jagger is her boyfriend.’ ‘Or Bob Dylan, she has that sort of name.’ I wondered if Bob Dylan took drugs. Maybe he was behind this charity. It was all very confusing; it was easier just to talk about how boring the Rolling Stones were. Why was Mick Jagger reading some crappy poetry about not being dead and not being asleep or something, while wearing a dress? And then there were the butterflies: thousands of them. We were totally showered in dead and dying butterflies. A load of them got down the back of my T-shirt. Then the conversation drifted on to the subject of the latest ‘Wednesday Play’. We all loved ‘The Wednesday Play’. You never

knew what it was going to be about. It was the best thing on telly. ‘Cathy Come Home’ was everybody’s favourite ‘Wednesday Play’, even though it was now almost three years old. Yun told me he had read about a new charity to help Cathy find a home. We both agreed that they didn’t need a charity for that, as all Cathy had to do was come to Corby. There wasn’t even a waiting list for a council house. They were always building new estates. And there were always jobs at the steelworks. And just as Keith Richards’s riff for ‘Satisfaction’ faded into the distance, Yun told me this new charity for Cathy was called Sheltered, or Shelter or something. ‘That other band were brilliant, though, what was their name? The one that did a song about a “schizoid man” or something,’ I asked Yun, as we went down the escalator into the Underground. ‘The King Crimsons,’ Yun answered. ‘They’re going to be massive.’ ‘Yeah, that’s what music should sound like now. The blues are dead.’

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These are real people Shelter have helped. To help even more people, go to shelter.org.uk/donatehere

December 13 1969

July 23 2013

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If you see Cathy, warn her not to come to Corby

ummers are short, the wind blows and soon the trees are bare. Mid-December ’69 and I am putting on my brand new

copy of ‘Let It Bleed’ by the Stones for the very first time. It came out the previous week. I wasn’t going to buy it because they had been so shit in Hyde Park, but when I saw the album cover I had to get it. So the needle gets to the opening riff of track one, side one. And as Keith’s guitar doubles back on itself, I remembered the last time I heard a Stones riff and how I had been thinking about a drug-taking charity and that other charity that was trying to find a home for Cathy, but I could not remember what that charity was called. Then Mick starts singing. That’s it: it was called Shelter, or was it Sheltered? And the ’60s were over.

he summers are shorter, the decades tumble and even the oak trees days are numbered. This morning an email landed in my

inbox asking if ‘Bill Drummond’ would write 800 words for a magazine the charity Shelter are putting out. The editor of the magazine was suggesting ‘Bill Drummond’ write something about ‘The house in Stockwell where The KLF lived and housed their car, the farmhouse where he discovered the damson tree, the place where he invented The17.’ I didn’t want to write anything about that but it has given me the excuse for not writing what I was supposed to be writing and for writing this instead. And aside from the embroidered memoir above, I wanted to use this as a reason to make the following observation: Whenever I read about the charity Shelter, I hear the opening riff of ‘Gimme Shelter’ in my head. And any time I hear ‘Gimme Shelter’ being played on the radio or somewhere, I think about the charity Shelter. The riff is still great. I hope Shelter is still doing its job as well as the riff. As for Corby, the steelworks that promised job security for life back in the 1960s have long since closed down. Corby Borough Council website informs me that ‘Corby has one of the highest proportions of homeowners at risk of repossession compared to other local authority areas.’ Further down the webpage it says: ‘If any of your residents are struggling with mortgage costs or any other housing issue please

encourage them to get advice from Shelter.’ So if you see Cathy, warn her not to come to Corby. Last month my youngest daughter went to see the Rolling Stones at Glastonbury. She was the same age as I was in 1969. She was down the front. No lines of Shelley and no dead butterflies but by all accounts they were brilliant. They played ‘Gimme Shelter’. I hope she never ends up homeless. As for drugs, it turned out they were not just for rock stars; their appeal was quite democratic. It wasn’t long before heroin arrived in Corby, tearing its way through those then fresh-faced and optimistic estates, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Postscript: Obviously Yun was not his real name. It is just what we called him. I’ve just put his real name into Google. There is a news story in the local paper, Yun has been raising £40,000 for an operation for his granddaughter who has cerebral palsy. I wonder what Yun’s version of this story would be like?

‘I see my light come shining From the West unto the East…’

Bill Drummond is embarking on a world tour. It begins under Spaghetti Junction, Birmingham on March 1 2014 and will end on April 28 2025. www.penkilnburn.com

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The stressed and the rest

When she was living in London, Lynsey Hanley’s flat resembled a fortress. Now she doesn’t even have

a burglar alarm. So what changed?Illustrations by David Sparshott

he first thing I hear when I wake up these days is the sound of birds singing; not the extended remix of sirens, police helicopters and

drunk blokes swearing that greeted my ears in a decade of living in inner-city London. All that’s changed is that I’ve moved house, from one of the worst-off postcodes in the country to one that’s almost certainly in the top quarter. I’m a relative newcomer to living in posh areas: having left the Birmingham estate on which I grew up at 18, I spent 15 years in the East End of London, most of that in an unprepossessing council block near a flyover. Yet from 2009 to 2011, I sublet a flat in a genteel and unruffled north London neighbourhood before

moving to the thriving inner suburb of Liverpool where I live now. What’s struck me in the few years I’ve so far spent on the ‘right’ side of the tracks is that privilege means one simple thing: the absence of stress. The oppressive stress that comes from having few resources, overstretched relationships and a tense living environment both contributes to, and is compounded by, inequality. Nice areas are full of people who don’t have too much to worry about: they have well-paid, reasonably stable jobs, access to good transport in addition to their own cars, good schools, great parks and a general sense that the social and environmental fabric is not fraying, in spite of a background awareness

of government cuts affecting local authority provision. There is far less fear of crime, for instance: my flat in the East End had been transformed into something resembling a prison by its previous occupants, with iron bars completely encasing the balcony and more on the front door. My current home doesn’t even have a burglar alarm. What the evidence shows is that stress – the kind of socially and environmentally imposed stress that can lead to breakdowns of individuals, relationships and the wider community fabric – is increasing in already stressed, and stressful, areas. A report published earlier this year by the LSE’s Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion states that, in comparison with 1997,

by 2010 ‘poor neighbourhoods had better facilities and less crime and vacant housing’. The boom years boosted the British economy as a whole, but unevenly and with a high reliance on creating public-sector jobs in areas where the private sector had effectively pulled out during previous recessions. In Middlesbrough, for instance, a third of the working population is employed in the public sector, in jobs that are vulnerable to government decisions and which don’t, in themselves, create further local growth. While there were tangible improvements to the built environment in many of our most run-down neighbourhoods, this coexisted with a sense that none of this was ever going to improve the social fabric as a whole without a move towards greater economic and social equality. Findings such as these lay bare the extent to which place, postcode and political will – or lack of it – affect the lives of individuals. The spatial geographer Danny Dorling notes that ‘Most people think they are average when asked. In most things, most are not. Most say they are normal... but what is normal changes rapidly as you

travel across the social topography of human identity in Britain – from the fertile crescent of advantage, where to succeed is to do nothing out of the ordinary, to the peaks of despair, where to just get by is extraordinary.’ The greater priority placed on housing policy by government, the greater chance we have of achieving a society in which you’ll have a long, healthy and relatively peaceful life no matter what your postcode. The only period in which the housing minister had full cabinet status was during and immediately after the war, when Nye Bevan – on his tea breaks from creating the NHS – sought to build real ‘homes for heroes’ in a ‘living tapestry’ of socially and economically mixed communities, with council houses indistinguishable from private homes and no social stigma attached to renting. As it is, there existed at the last count an 11-year gap in life expectancy between those who live on the council estate where I spent my childhood and those who live in the more affluent part of the same borough, Solihull. The place in which you live still has the power to determine whether you live to 69 or 80.

In the last decade and a half, the difference in life expectancy at birth between rich and poor areas has got bigger. It’s not so much the case that people in poor neighbourhoods have become less healthy: more that those in rich areas have pulled away from the rest, have become even more healthy, are living even longer than the average. The evidence suggests that it’s because the more affluent can, to a great extent, buy themselves out of insecure, uncertain and therefore stressful living conditions. If this trend continues, more people are likely to do whatever they can to avoid living in areas with more than their share of environmental stresses. In Dorling’s words, most areas of Britain are becoming ‘less average’: the places in which birdsong is drowned out by sirens are becoming fewer, but more intense in their concentration of poverty and the stress that comes with it. One thing’s for sure, though: I won’t be ordering that security system just yet.

Lynsey Hanley is the author of ‘Estates: An Intimate History’ (Granta)

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Bizarre housemate interviews. Assessments based on your hair. Finding a room has got ridiculous

Words: Robbie Wojchiechowski. Portraits: Travis Hodges

or the last year, I’ve been living at my girlfriend’s student house in Hackney, east London. We share it with four other housemates and it’s nice, apart from the mould behind the bed, the dirty sofas, the broken bathroom, the faulty lighting

and the absent property manager (from whom they haven’t heard in a year). With each housemate putting in a good £100 a week for this place, it’s at the budget end of the rental market – £420 a month each – but of course that’s without bills included. The fight for even mediocre properties in the capital is serious: one renter told me that there were regularly 40 applicants competing for the rooms she was trying to secure. Imagine how daunting this must be for the young. Housing is a problem for our whole generation, and not just because we’ve grown up knowing that we won’t be able to afford a deposit until we’re middle-aged. It’s particularly difficult when you remember that many young people entering the rental market are working in low-paid jobs or,

if they can afford it, interning somewhere for free to try and break into a career. These harsh realities are compounded by the increasingly common ‘X Factor’-style interviews, either one-on-one or in front of a panel of potential housemates.

Existing tenants are setting delusional celebrity-style targets for potential housemates

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Robbie tries his best to please the judges

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went through two different forms of interview,’ says Natalie Yates, 21, from London. ‘Mass auditions, where seven or eight potential housemates would all vie for the household’s attention by adopting whatever personalities

the householders seemed sympathetic to. I saw far too many fake characters for my liking in that scenario. ‘In one interview, I got asked what music I liked out of a list of four: Coldplay, Prodigy, Notorious BIG and Girls Aloud. I replied Coldplay, only to be told this was more of a “Prodigy kind of household”.’ The stories people tell me suggest that existing tenants are setting delusional celebrity-style targets for potential housemates. ‘People leapt to conclusions based on what I look like,’ says Yates. ‘One householder pointed at my dip-dyed hair and told me they weren’t looking for “partygoers”.’ It might sound funny but there’s a serious issue here. What protection is there from people who ‘aren’t looking for’ gay people, or those with a certain skin tone? The shortage of rooms is making people desperate. One renter I spoke to was guilt-tripped into letting a house go after another potential housemate walked in, sat down and said, ‘If you don’t live with me, I’ll be living on the street’. He got the room. Twenty-seven-year-old Adam Taylor moved to London four years ago. He works as an account manager and has just found a room after six weeks of intensive, stressful searching. He’d been viewing properties almost every night and every place he visited had 12-15 other viewings booked in. As with Natalie Yates, it was the flatmates living in the property who chose the new tenant. ‘I had to constantly perform and try hard to get picked,’ he says. ‘I’d be sitting on the sofa in front of people holding notebooks and pens. I felt like I was being interviewed for a job. At the first one I tried to have a bit of conversation with the flatmates but they shot me down and told me to only answer the questions, and that there might be time for a general chat afterwards. ‘The whole experience was really stressful. It’s hard to focus at work when you have the fact you’re homeless hanging over you. The endless viewings, the rejections. It’s an absolute nightmare. Living out of a bag, having my stuff in storage, it’s all really unsettling.’ Since we spoke, Taylor has had to start again: the tenants eventually admitted he’d be subletting from a housemate who was moving out, which means he wouldn’t have any rights or security. ‘Thank God I’ve got somewhere to stay at a friend’s for two weeks,’ he says. ‘Otherwise who knows where I’d sleep. I feel for those who are new to the city or have no friends here. Where would they sleep?’ Finding a room has become an expensive, boring and depressing assault course, and it’s affecting everyone. Students, middle-earners, the increasing number of people house-sharing into their thirties and beyond, and the growing number of 50+ renters. We are literally all in this together.

Writer and blogger Robbie Wojchiechowski writes about music, youth, education and social issues. His work has appeared in Time Out, NME, The Evening Standard and The Guardian N

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‘I The new normal So, how do you find a room?

WebsitesRenting websites are a common option for those looking for rooms. The best offer forums where users can interact with each other freely, and with regular email updates on new listed properties, they can be a good way of keeping up to date with what’s available. The worst sites are a confusing mess of advertising, poor photographs and minimalist descriptions that can leave you unable to distinguish the differences between the rooms on offer.

Social mediaFacebook, Twitter and Instagram have become useful search engines for renters looking for rooms – and for tenants looking to check out potential housemates. ‘I would only ever rent with friends, friends of friends or friends of friends of friends,’ says Rob Shute, a 24-year-old PR who has used Facebook to find potential flatmates. ‘At least they always come with the recommendation of another person.’ Social media has its downside, though: if you’ve let your profile slide, you can expect to be quickly shuffled into the ‘no’ pile.

NewsagentsThe dangerous last resort for anyone looking for a house in 2013. The moment you start scanning random newsagent windows for horrendously odd handwritten adverts is a dangerous one. Stop. Now.

24 25Songs from a room Songs from a room

Songs from a room Beth Orton

Interview: Jude Rogers. Portrait: Jo Metson Scott

he singer-songwriter talks us through five songs that remind

her of five very different places she called homeThe Beatles ‘Taxman’‘This reminds me of when I was very little. I can still hear the sound of it streaming through the house. We moved from a pig farm in Swaffham, Norfolk, when I was three, to a house in the centre of Norwich: my mum, dad, brothers and me. It was a big house with a lovely garden: a perfect place to grow up. My parents weren’t very musical, though, so this was one of the only records they had. I clearly remember what it did to me every time it went on. I was properly in awe of it; a bit afraid of it, even. Like a rabbit in the headlights, standing in the living room, this little girl going “Wow!”’

Marianne Faithfull ‘As Tears Go By’‘My mum and dad split up when I was nine, and my dad died when I was 11. My mum and us kids moved to someone else’s place for a while, then to a little two- up, two-down in a funny row of houses. We were all on top of each other. My elder brother used to play his music there all the time: The Clash’s ‘Guns of Brixton’ really reminds me of then. ‘But someone had also given me a first pressing of Marianne Faithfull’s ‘As Tears Go By’. It was my first real favourite record. I think of that house, and I think of myself sitting on the steps to my brother’s bedroom, running back and forth to put it on, over and over. Her voice, that song, its simplicity; it still means a lot to me.’

Joni Mitchell ‘All I Want’‘I moved to Dalston in London at 14 with my mum, but at 16 I moved out, and went back to Norwich. I lived in this tiny bedsit. All I had was a bed, a bit of lace on the window for a net, and this big wooden box record player that I’d inherited from my grandfather, with these built-in speakers. I loved it so much. I took it everywhere with me, that thing. Whenever I think of it, I remember a friend of mine in Norwich bringing me Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ one night, and me putting it on, lying on that bed, looking at that bit of lace on the window. Thinking how beautiful it all was.’

Beth Orton ‘Don’t Need a Reason’‘My mum died when I was 19. At 22, I was sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house in Vauxhall. I had no bed, nothing to cover me when I slept, and it was horrible: one of the most depressing times of my life. I had my guitar, though. I remember sitting in the kitchen there one day – it was a sunny day, a nice day – and suddenly finding these chords. It sounds trite, but these chords suddenly gave me a really good feeling, the idea that my life could be turned around. They became the beginning of one of the songs that would end up on ‘Trailer Park’. I still think of that place when I play those chords now. They gave me hope when I was at my lowest ebb.’

Sam Amidon ‘Wedding Dress’‘This reminds me of my house now, back in London, and my husband, Sam, who wrote this, and our daughter. I used to play Sam’s album when she was a little baby, when I was feeding her. We’d sit there listening to it quietly together. She’d fall asleep to it, as if it was a comforter. We live so close to where I lived when I was 14 now, too. Back then I’d be taping the charts in my tiny bedroom opposite the train tracks listening to tapes on my spray-painted ghettoblaster. And now, all these years on, here I am again. I’m home.’

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Jude Rogers is a music writer and co-editor of Smoke: A London Peculiar

Every issue of Here will feature a new piece of work by an artist. It’s our way of thanking you, and finding interesting ways of talking about what Shelter do. This time sloganeering provacateur Bob & Roberta Smith encourages people to be good landlords.

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espite his collectivised name, Bob & Roberta Smith could be described as the art world’s equivalent of the one-man band,

in the mould of those itinerant musicians once found playing guitar, harmonica and accordion all at once. Not only is the artist (real name Patrick Brill) lead singer in a quartet of noisy troubadours known as The Apathy Band, a DJ on alternative London radio station Resonance FM and a rabble-rousing political activist and campaigner, he also makes art. Bob & Roberta Smith’s work has something of the multitasking, noisy juggling act to it too, being constructed from bits of wood with loudly painted texts and often humorous slogans, or else resembling bombastic, colourful signs, billboards or banners. He might even throw in the occasional sculpted carrot or bronze-cast potato for good measure. The jerry-built nature of Bob & Roberta Smith’s sandwich-board signage might give the impression that there’s not much more than retro nostalgia and handmade charm beneath their roughly hewn surfaces. However, he is not some cosy echo of more revolutionary eras gone by, but something of a no-holds-barred firebrand, albeit a self-effacing and unpretentious one, dressed in

the guise of a dapper 1940s pork-pie-hatted chappy. ‘When I was much younger I was given a book of John Heartfield’s collages by my sister [whose name, by the way, is Roberta],’ he says. ‘I realised then that writing could be visual art and that artists could be politically engaged.’ Yet the artist sounds a note of caution on his chosen path: ‘I don’t mind being combative, but straightforward propaganda is dull. Even when I paint a piece like ‘Make Art Not War’, I’m not trying to tell people what to think.’ In real life, I have to address him by his real name, as his schizophrenic forename always makes for confusing introductions, something else his work does brilliantly when first encountered – flitting between comic

naivety and pinpoint political punchiness. I decide to get stuck in and ask Brill whether he isn’t an old romantic at heart, believing that art could ever change the world? ‘If you chose your targets carefully you can make a difference,’ he says, adding that he’s long been ‘badgering government to take the arts more seriously’. This has included saving ‘Old Flo’, a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore actually called ‘Draped Seated Woman’, which Tower Hamlets Council tried to sell to the tune of £20 million. ‘By dressing up as the sculpture and holding a “Flo”sh mob, we managed to completely screw up the sale of that piece,’ he says. ‘So you can effect change.’ Bob & Roberta Smith doesn’t do it single-handedly (by name or by nature), he is quick to admit, teaming up with, among others, the Cultural Learning Alliance and Nicholas Serota of Tate, for instance, to protest against the education secretary’s controversial plans to reduce the proportion of arts taught on the curriculum. ‘I made this letter to Michael Gove,’ he says, referring to the hilariously titled missive, ‘Your destruction of Britain’s ability to draw, design and sing’. ‘Eventually he had to get rid of the proposed Ebacc.’ I still chuckle at the opening line too, which read: ‘Michael,

It could and should be a positive, not a pernicious, thing to be a landlord

The art of being a landlord

He may be the art world’s most confusingly named artist, but Bob & Roberta Smith has a clear message when it comes

to letting your property for money. He talks to Ossian Ward

a look at your tie-and-shirt combination informs me you are not a visually minded person.’ And yet the letter’s suggestion that the future of British creativity was at stake was an incredibly powerful message. ‘We are still fighting over Gove’s replacement scheme for the GCSE,’ says Brill wistfully. His latest ruse is to start his own Art Party, a pseudo-political entity made up of artists, filmmakers and thinkers. So far his indisputably stellar line-up includes the likes of Jeremy Deller, Cornelia Parker and Mark Wallinger, and the first Art Party Conference is taking place in Scarborough this November. However, I am keen to ask Brill about the worst landlord he ever had, having just seen his painted contribution to Here. ‘I lived in New York between 1988 and 1991,’ he explains. ‘Between Mayor Koch and Mayor Dinkins, in a fantastic building in Brooklyn. ‘Unfortunately it was next to the Gowanus Canal, one of the most polluted waterways in America which had been a thermometer factory during the American Civil War, so the floors were impregnated with mercury.’ Smith recalls the realisation that bare feet weren’t a good idea with some fondness, joking, ‘Of course, I can’t remember any of that now, what with

memory loss being one of the side-effects of mercury.’ He continues: ‘We were living the dream in open spaces full of artists and designers, but one night the mother of all fires took hold, causing what the Fire Department referred to as a “five-station call-out”, with fire trucks coming from as far as Staten Island. Luckily no one was hurt, but although the building was declared unsafe, our landlord said we shouldn’t have been living there in the first place, as it was illegal. We’d been paying him $500 a month!’ Thankfully the experience wasn’t all bad. Brill met his partner Jessica Voorsanger there, and was influenced, he says, by the ‘graphics and album covers as well as by the cartoon-like paintings of Kenny Scharf and Keith Haring. Also, when I was in New York, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger started smothering the East Village with their slogans,’ arguably paving the way for his own very public pronouncements. The pressing problems for tenants today have also hit close to home for Brill, who talks at length about a mentally ill relative who is at risk of losing his housing benefits in the current funding shake-up. ‘It’s just uncivilised,’ he says. ‘Everything is predicated on high capitalism and based on

greed rather than on need. If you fall behind on payments, you could be out of your home by the next week. There are no margins for error or statutory rights and things can get disastrous quickly. It could and should be a positive, not a pernicious, thing to be a landlord.’ When I recall our last interview, for a show entitled ‘This Artist Is Dangerous’, Brill says that he’s not that radical, especially compared to someone like Ai Weiwei or other prominent figures in the so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ or the ongoing struggles of the Arab Spring. ‘I am just trying to live a normal life,’ he says. ‘In a democracy, it’s important that you use the tools you have been given, because otherwise they will take them away from you. While I’m not about to be imprisoned by Ed Vaizey, I am keen to engage politicians! I’m fundamentally a democratic person.’Bob & Roberta Smith’s Art Party Conference takes place at The Spa, Scarborough on November 23. More info at artpartyconference.co.uk.

Ossian Ward is a writer on contemporary art who contributes to national and international publications and is now head of content at The Lisson Gallery, London

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What housing crisis? Everyone talks about it. But what is

the housing crisis, and can it be solved? Author Ross Clark shares his thoughts

Illustrations: Eve Lloyd Knight

here has perhaps never been a time when Britain did not have some sort of housing crisis. In the 1930s, the country’s slums were

a national disgrace. In the 1940s there was a shortage of housing following wartime bombing. In the 1980s, the country was forced to examine its conscience over the increasing number of people sleeping rough on London’s streets, while in the 1990s thousands suffered the misery of negative equity and repossession. But never has there been a housing crisis which has been so widespread and which has stretched so far up the income scale. It is no longer just the poor who have difficulty in securing a decent home, but people who

earn what in other respects are decent salaries. People like Richard Holloway, 28, and his wife Melissa, 31. Both are graduates with good jobs in London. Yet the dream of owning – or even renting – a home large enough so they can start a family has so far eluded them. Home is a rented one-bedroom flat in Pimlico, central London, for which they pay £1,500 per month. They would like to buy a property, but their budget of £160,000 is only half what is required to afford even a one-bedroom flat in the area. ‘We have thought about moving out of London,’ says Richard. ‘Perhaps to the Medway Towns, where we could afford to buy a house. But for both of us to commute into central London would

then cost us £9,000 a year.’ Britain, in many ways, has never been better off. When it comes to food, consumer goods, foreign holidays, we are unimaginably rich compared to previous generations. Yet for those who do not own property, modern Britain seems a poorer place than it was for their parents and grandparents. They struggle to buy, and they struggle to rent. When the price of food, clothing and virtually every other necessity goes up it is almost universally considered to be bad news. Yet when the price of housing goes up – no less a necessity – it is widely regarded as good news. Few, from headline-writers to government ministers, even use

the word ‘inflation’ to describe it, preferring phrases like ‘house price growth’. If inflation in house prices were a good thing, then we would have had a spectacular century. To take one example, houses on an estate in Mitcham, south-west London sold for between £315 and £530 when they were built in the early 1930s. In 2013 prices – adjusted for general inflation – this works out at between £18,000 and £30,000. Yet these same houses now sell for upwards of £300,000. In other words, the value of these properties has risen tenfold in real terms over the past 80 years.

But it is not good news for everyone. Rising house prices have put buying a home far out of the reach of people who once would have taken it for granted. Home ownership grew rapidly throughout the 20th Century, peaking in 2003 when 70.9 per cent of households were owner-occupied. By 2012 it had fallen to 65 per cent. Among 30-year-olds the fall has been much more precipitous, with only 56 per cent now owning their homes. Does it matter if people cannot afford to buy property? It is often pointed out that in Germany home ownership is markedly lower than in Britain – and it doesn’t do the German economy any harm. But there is a big difference between renting property in Britain and Germany. In Germany, tenants enjoy controlled rents and high security of tenure. In Britain, renting is often more expensive than buying. According to a recent report by the Resolution Foundation, in one-third of local authority districts a

couple with one child and a net income of £22,000 would have to spend more than 35 per cent of their disposable income to rent a two-bedroom property. Moreover, renting in Britain is accompanied by a lack of security. Most tenants are on shorthold tenancies which give them no more than six months’ or a year’s contract. The high cost of renting is not just a problem for tenants; it places an increasing burden on the taxpayer, who is forced to subsidise low-income households in the private rental market. Housing benefit cost the taxpayer £22.7 billion a year in 2011/12, and it has seen a sharp upwards trend in recent years. The beneficiaries of the extra billions are not tenants but landlords, who have been able to use the rules by which housing benefit is calculated in order to inflate rents. Since 2008, housing benefit payments have been based on a Local Housing Allowance, based on average rents for the area. Anecdotal evidence suggests that as soon as these rates are published, and it becomes clear how much tenants can afford to pay, landlords react by putting up rents. The higher rents feed back into an increased Local Housing Allowance, so creating an inflationary spiral. In 2008, 4.17 million households were receiving an average of £76.79 per week in housing benefit. Just four years later, in November 2012, that had risen to 5.05 million households receiving an average of £89.27.

Behind the housing crisis lies a fundamental shortage of new homes. House building is at levels well below what is required to keep pace with the growth in population. The shortage is compounded by the use of property as an instrument of speculative investment. Many flats and houses are being bought not as places to

live, but as commodities which their buyers hope will increase in price. In 2012, 97,580 new homes were started in England. This is less than half the number of homes which were built at the height of the boom in 2006/07 and just a shade over 40 per cent of new homes which would be required to fulfil the government’s estimate for annual growth in households of 221,000 over the next two decades. The disparity between house-building and household growth does not imply that thousands of families a year will find themselves out on the street, because household growth is partly determined by the cost and availability of housing. When housing is expensive, for example, young people live for longer in their parents’ home, reducing the rate of household growth.

House building has fallen largely in reaction to the credit crunch. Buyers who prior to 2007 found it easy to to obtain high loan-to-value mortgages are now unable to do so. Meanwhile, house builders are unable to reduce their prices to meet the buying power of their potential customers because of rising costs. Greater house building would not automatically result in property that’s immediately more affordable. Spain and Ireland both had high rates of house building during the boom years – in 2006 nearly 700,000 new homes were built in Spain, a country of 40 million people. And yet this did not stop prices rising sharply during the boom: there, as in Ireland, prices rose every bit as much, if not more, than they did in Britain. The effect of surplus housing was only felt after the crash, when house prices crashed too.

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Why did these countries see a boom in prices when their rate of home building seems, on paper, to be more than adequate to house the population? Speculation. During the boom years, many people bought property not just because they wanted somewhere to live but because they saw it as an easy way to make capital gains. In contrast to the stock market, it is very easy for investors in the property market to take out secured loans. This allows them to amplify profits through a process known as ‘gearing’. If you have £10,000 and you borrow £90,000 to buy a £100,000 house whose value then rises by 10 per cent, you have doubled your initial capital. If it falls by 10 per cent, on the other hand, you will have lost your entire capital. The risks and potential gains involved mean that professional investors are more likely to buy a portfolio of properties, aggravating the shortage of homes and concentrating home ownership in the hands of the few. If the houses bought by investors were all rented out, perhaps it would not matter so much. But in many cases they do not bother to do this. Ed Mead, an estate agent with Douglas & Gordon in Chelsea, has noticed an increasing number of properties at the top end of the London property market being bought in a phenomenon known as ‘buy-to-leave’. ‘Someone who bought an £850,000 flat in Chelsea 18 months ago will have an asset worth nearly a million now,’ he says. ‘So they ask themselves: why bother letting it out for £600,000 when they are making so much money on the increase in capital value?’ Many of these investors do not even live in Britain. London developments in recent

years have been deliberately launched in property roadshows in Hong Kong and Singapore, in some cases to buyers who have never even visited the UK. In the case of the Battersea Power Station redevelopment, almost all of the 866 flats were reported to have been sold off-plan to Far Eastern investors. Britain is not the only country which has seen its housing stock targeted for speculative investment. But other countries, such as Switzerland, have reacted by introducing laws that reserve a proportion of the housing stock for people who need somewhere to live. In Britain, there are very few such planning restrictions. Successive British governments have observed the problem of a dysfunctional property market, but the measures they have employed to try and tackle it have all had one thing in common: they have been designed to keep house prices high, fearful of the effect on the banks and on public morale if prices were allowed to fall. George Osbourne’s Help to Buy scheme is a case in point. It uses taxpayers’ money to underwrite high loan-to-value mortgages which the banks are no longer prepared to advance. Subsidising buyers without doing anything to increase the supply of housing, can only have one result: yet more inflation. In the short term it will help some people on to the housing ladder, but only at the expense of making life even more difficult for the next generation of buyers. What if the same pattern – low supply of housing, combined with inflationary government intervention – continues for another decade? What will Britain look like? House price inflation is a powerful engine of social inequality. It makes those who are already wealthy even wealthier, while those who do not own property grow relatively poorer. High prices and a shortage of property act as a brake on social mobility,

preventing low income groups moving to more expensive parts of the country, and an impediment in the development of new enterprises. There are ways in which government could intervene in the property market to make it friendlier towards tenants and towards people who want to buy a home as somewhere to live. It could change tenancy law to give greater security. It could increase house building by doing as post-war governments did and designate new towns: compulsorily purchasing large amounts of land at agricultural rates, designating it for development and selling it at much lower prices than developers currently have to pay for land. Most new homes could have planning restrictions placed on them ensuring they can only be used as main homes. Yet governments have been loath to intervene, regarding it as an unwarranted intrusion into the workings of the free market. But their refusal to do so will have a contrary effect: it is leading more and more people to become dependent upon the state for their housing needs. In the 1980s, home ownership was encouraged in the belief that it would allow people to become more self-reliant. Thirty years of sharply rising house prices later we have ended up with the very opposite. We are reinventing Victorian society, where a large class of tenants rent their homes from a small class of landlords. The great property-owning democracy, as it used to be called, is beginning more and more to resemble a plutocracy.

Ross Clark is the author of ‘A Broom Cupboard of One’s Own: The Housing Crisis and How to Solve It’, an ebook published by Harriman House

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‘ If inflation in house prices were a good thing, then we would have had a spectacular century’

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‘The ants’ nest in the oven caught fire’

It’s tough enough surviving without enough money to buy food, but cooking it can be a whole new problem. Food blogger Miss South explains

Painting: Joël Penkman

hey say the kitchen is the heart of the home. And when I was homeless, it was a kitchen I missed the most. I grew up sitting round a series of kitchen tables, from the one my parents bought before they were even married, to those of

family and friends. I learned early on that kitchens really are the best place at a party and even when I lived in rented houses when I first moved to London, the kitchen was where everything happened. When I first moved into a hostel after having to leave my rented house, it was the space of the kitchen I missed. I felt cooped up and cramped in my one room. Shaken and upset by the circumstances that had brought me there, I had little appetite for the first few weeks. Endless trips to the homeless persons’ unit and the housing office kept me out all day and I grabbed a sandwich or a cheap burger or fried chicken to keep me going. As time went on, the cost of bus fares to see all the agencies and organisations I needed to deal with to keep my hostel place began to chip away at my income, and I began to crave food that didn’t come wrapped in greaseproof paper. I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of the hostel and let my mind drift to big pots of vegetable soup, a burnished roast chicken or crisp steamed broccoli. I missed these things more than my bed and my front door. There was a kitchen in that hostel. At first glance it looked like a normal family kitchen. I turned the oven on, craving a baked potato heaped with buttered cabbage, already planning to turn the remains into soup. The ants’ nest in the oven caught fire with a charred smell that would ruin any appetite. I realised I had no knife to chop the cabbage nor a pan to cook it in. I hacked some shreds off it with a dinner knife. They were so thin and meagre I figured they’d cook in the oven easily. The potato went in. And stayed in. The thermostat seemed to have the oven not quite hot enough to dry my hair, let alone crackle the skin of a spud. Several hours later, exhausted by the girl-guide adaptations I’d been forced into by lack of equipment, I ate a flabby potato with al dente, yet singed, cabbage shreds. Not even the butter pats

I’d pinched from a café could make it enjoyable. I never cooked in the kitchen again. My next hostel had locked theirs up. I ate instant noodles ‘cooked’ in a bowl with a plate over it. There was endless cup-a-soup and couscous combined to make up for the fact I couldn’t afford seasonings and spices. I discovered you can’t boil an egg in a kettle. Dry cereal filled the gaps. I looked longingly at microwaves in Argos. I could just about stretch to the cheapest if I wasn’t going to have to move hostel again. If I had something that bulky I’d need to take a cab to move it. I never knew when I’d move on. That was why my cooking implements were still in storage. I debated a sandwich toaster but I had nowhere to keep the cheese. Same with keeping things made in a slow cooker. It was bad enough my milk went off more or less daily, I didn’t want food poisoning too. I moved to a B&B next. There was a fridge with a tiny freezer compartment. No more lumpy milk and it felt like luxury. Breakfast was a loaf of sliced white, a tub of marge, 12 eggs and a pot of jam for the week. I gave the eggs to a friend as a gift when I went to use her washing machine. You run out of favours quickly otherwise. Then the letters Shelter wrote on my behalf worked. I was rehoused in a brand new council flat in just a few days. I used my life savings to buy a fridge and a cooker. Having not cried once the whole time I was homeless, I sobbed when they told me I’d have to wait six weeks for the cooker to be delivered. It arrived two days later. I will never forget the first meal I cooked in my new home, the first eaten at a kitchen table in over a year. Pork chops and champ: comfort food. Every day I sit there and eat the food I can now properly cook and I wonder how I got to be so lucky. I only wish I could share it with those still facing that daily struggle.

Miss South writes about food at northsouthfood.com

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settled on Hanover Housing Association as their developer and Housing for Women as a social landlord for a mixed-tenure development.

‘It’s taken a long, long time,’ says Brenton. ‘Hanover did find us a site fairly quickly in 2010, but it’s taken us until this year to get planning permission. People weren’t willing to understand a new type of model. Initially the local authority was concerned about having older people moving into the area because it puts pressure on services. But when I finally got in the door and told them about the scheme they were really keen.’ The group is now tendering for a contractor to complete the build, with a moving-in date of 2015. A project board has been set up which includes representation from the group, and decisions are consulted upon, but some members of the co-op have taken a back seat in the process.

Others who choose the self-build route are far more actively involved in their project – literally digging the foundations of their new home into the earth. Serena Bedford will soon begin a training course to learn how to create her self-build property from the ground up. One night a week she will attend Devon College along with the 24 members of the Broadhempston Community Land Trust (CLT), a regeneration company set up a year ago to self-build a new development in the sought-after area. The course, designed by the Land Society, will teach participants how to construct homes specially designed for self-building using sustainable local materials. The group will build together, helping each other as they go: no house will be allowed to move on to the next stage of work until each property has reached the same milestone.

If we build it, we will come

More and more people are turning to community building as a way of getting an affordable home. Hannah Fearn looks at the options

Illustrations: Emma Kelly

rand Designs’ presenter Kevin McCloud says he has witnessed one positive side effect of

the British housing crisis: for the first time in decades, Britons want to live in communities rather than homes. ‘I think that the housing crisis as a result of the recession forced people to look at their home in another light,’ he says. ‘Not so much as a financial asset but as somewhere in which to put down roots and be part of somewhere, in a more social way. When times are good, we’re all independent financially and we don’t need to rely on each other. When times are tough we need each other.’

This change in attitude may be behind the growing popularity of self-build communities. Britain has long lagged behind its European neighbours when it comes to people designing and developing their own properties: 50 per cent of European properties are self-built, with a figure as high as 80 per cent in Austria. In the UK it’s as low as 8 per cent. But the statistics are shifting. More than a quarter (28 per cent) of detached homes in the UK are now self-built – a figure that has risen in part due to the catastrophically low building rates across the housing sector. McCloud wants to see self-build projects become more popular. The Lancaster Cohousing scheme is a good example of his vision of the future. The scheme developed 41 private homes (mostly two- and three-bedroom) on a 2.5-hectare site near the village of Halton, outside Lancaster. The development includes shared facilities, such as a large communal cooking and dining area, a laundry and children’s playroom. All residents are expected to play a significant role in the life of the community. Yet that now-thriving community took some time to develop. ‘A group of five started things up, and set up Lancaster Cohousing as a limited company,’ explains director and resident Dr Jan Maskell. ‘Then members joined and paid a small fee to start with and, later, a 30 per cent deposit.’ The very earliest members clubbed together £600,000 to purchase the site,

with member deposits and sale of freehold properties helping to raise additional funds. But the whole development cost a total of £8m, and the remainder was covered by a loan from Triodos Bank, paid off as each member purchased his or her home. The group worked together on design and build, appointing contractors to deliver their shared vision. And though there are lessons for the group to learn from the project (not every property in the development has been sold, for instance), Maskell has some advice for those looking to follow in their footsteps by starting a self-build group. ‘Develop policies and ensure values are shared,’ she says. ‘Ensure members understand all of these. Have a committed core of people who will drive it through. Share the work among as many team members as possible and work closely with your design team and contractors.’There were significant struggles for the Halton build along the way. As Maskell wryly explains: ‘In chronological order the difficulties were finding a site, purchasing the site, getting a loan, managing the build project and selling the homes.’

A lack of understanding of the principles of self-build and co-housing is a challenge shared by Maria Brenton, project consultant for the Older Women’s Cohousing Group in Barnet, north London. The scheme has been in the planning since the 1990s. The group has recruited 23 women aged between their late fifties and mid-eighties, but it has taken many years to find a build site and the right partners to work with. The group eventually

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‘ The housing crisis forced people to look at their home in another light’

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e decided to get involved because we think it’s an exciting and challenging project,’ says Bedford, ‘and

it means we will be able to own a home in an amazing area that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to live in.’ When they finally move in, Bedford’s family will have earned 25 per cent of the value of their home in sweat equity. They will purchase 50 per cent, and the remaining quarter will be held by the CLT to ensure it is retained for local affordable housing. Each family pays between £107,000 and £115,000 to live in a property worth £350,000. ‘The thought of building it ourselves is daunting,’ says Bedford. ‘However, we are looking forward to it. I’m not sure what stops others from doing the same thing.’

Not everyone who opts for self-build is motivated enough to do the grunt work. The majority of self-built homes in Europe are actually ‘custom-built’, where groups of individuals work with consultants who manage the whole process. Beverley Sand is set to become an owner in a custom-build scheme in Nottingham organised with regeneration company Igloo. Although properties are largely designed from a common plan, each owner can still make some changes. ‘What interested us was the opportunity to have some input into designing the place where we’re going to live,’ she explains. ‘Originally we all thought we were all going to do dramatically different things but in fact a lot of it is similar.’

Sand says the custom-build approach means the group has bargaining power in the construction market. ‘We have to move the builders towards self-build or custom-build,’ she says. ‘That’s something that will be quite an interesting part of this. It’s why we need an intermediary who can check it at each stage. We have got someone who understands all the technical details.’McCloud agrees that custom-build is likely to prove most attractive to British homeowners, providing the benefits of self-build without the hassle.

‘I would say don’t try and reinvent the wheel,’ he says. ‘Let somebody else do the groundwork and infrastructure and vegetable garden. You concentrate on the bit that makes a big difference to you. The [schemes] that work, work because of the support that’s provided. People effectively have a partner in the process.’

Hannah Fearn is contributing editor of the Guardian local government, housing and public leaders networks

More information on self-building and community building

The Self-Build Portal A government-funded site providing advice, links and case studies.

www.selfbuildportal.org.uk

Self-Build Housing in the UK A summary of the latest academic research from the University of York.

www.tinyurl.com/yorkselfbuild

Build It Magazine The website has an interesting archive of self-build case studies.

www.self-build.co.uk

The Self-Build Forum An online community discussing the practicalities of self-build.

www.selfbuild.com

The National Self-Build Association A membership organisation for custom-builders.

www.nasba.org.uk

‘Wy earliest memory of my estate was riding my bike around my house and falling off. I was three years old. My

friend, who was a bit older than me, helped me up and we laughed about it. It was my first experience of being able to laugh at myself in a nice way. ‘I lived on the St Raphael’s Estate in Neasden in north London. It was never a problem that I was from an estate until I got to grammar school. The kids there were supposed to have seen more of life than I had, but they were really closed-minded. They would either make fun or were obsessed with asking me about ‘hood stuff’. It was annoying. It was an identity that we got attached to us from very early in our school careers. I had every right to be there. Most of them had been tutored since they were young and all I had was my mum backing me. She was buying me books and helping me get the competitive edge. My brother had gone to a local school but that didn’t turn out very well.

‘I think the benefits of living on my estate were that I saw what a community could be like. It became bad as I grew up but I remember always being able to go to my friend’s house and their mums being able to tell me off like they were my own. We were proper blind to race.

‘What funny insights can I share about growing up on the estate? Racing everyone else for hot water, cos when that hot water runs out… Boy! You wake up and you have to know it’s a race! My big brother used to just sleep for ever and wake up to no hot water. I was like, that’s your business! ‘It’s important to have a different perception of estates because people have to know that life isn’t straightforward and easy. Some people are trying very hard to make things work – and they do. Those are the quiet successes which should be celebrated. If people passing laws spent a bit more time on an estate, they would understand a bit more.’

Watch George’s videos at georgethepoet.com

Christian Adofo writes about ethnicity, culture and heritage in sport and music. His work has appeared in The Independent, Line of Best Fit and SBTV.

Writer’s blockYouTube phenomenon and Cambridge graduate

George The Poet talks estates, identity and hot water with Christian Adofo

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Germany It was a couple of beers that sealed the deal for Ben Simons after a long and difficult search for a home to rent in Cologne. He’d seen 60 flats in a month, but had not had much luck with the German system where landlords choose a tenant from a shortlist drawn up by a lettings agent, or even by the outgoing tenants themselves. ‘In the UK, if you want to rent a flat and you’ve got the money and references, the flat is yours,’ he says. ‘It’s essentially first come first served. In Germany it’s different: you apply and the landlord takes their pick.’ Luckily for Simons, his long search ended when he managed to speak to a landlord face to face, and he got the flat thanks to a chat over a drink. But despite the initial difficulty of securing a property, Simons says the German renting market is good news for tenants. ‘Once you’re in, the law is on your side and you can’t be chucked out without a very good reason,’ he explains. ‘And you get much more value for your money.’

Vive la différence?In Germany you might have to buy floorboards.

In France, hand over your parents’ bank account details. Kate Murray looks at renting across Europe

e might like to think of ourselves as a nation of proud homeowners, but high property prices are pushing

house buying further and further out of people’s reach. And with a dire shortage of social housing, it’s private landlords who are picking up the slack. In just over a decade, the proportion of English households renting in the private sector has almost doubled to more than 17 per cent. Renting is fast becoming ‘the new normal’. Yet despite this growth, fuelled in part by the 1988 Housing Act, which scrapped the rules that once controlled rents and lengths of tenancy, many fear the private rented sector is failing tenants. A report, ‘The Private Rented Sector’ published by the Communities and Local Government Select Committee this July describes the lettings sector as the ‘Wild West’ of the property industry, with rip-off fees and sharp practices rife. Poor-quality properties and a lack of security for tenants, particularly the increasing number of families who are now forced to rent, are also big problems. ‘I want to see renting as an attractive alternative to owner occupation,’ said Clive Betts, chair of the select committee of MPs which produced the report. ‘The market has to better meet the needs of renters.’ It’s all a stark contrast with conditions in mainland Europe, where renting is common at all levels of society and often well protected. The select committee were particularly impressed by Germany, which they described as ‘a much more mature market, better able to meet the needs of tenants’. It seems we have a lot to learn from our peers across the Channel.

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Simons pays €1,100 for his spacious two-bedroomed flat which he shares with his partner and two children, a rent he claims represents less than half the amount he would pay for a comparable property in the area of north London where he previously lived. In Germany, around 60 per cent of the population rent, mostly from private landlords. Being a tenant is generally seen as a good option. But there are some quirks in the system which tenants used to the UK market might struggle with. Because people tend to live in their rented homes for a long time, and pay for improvements themselves, they can take absolutely everything with them when they leave, up to and including the kitchen sink. New tenants might have to pay several thousand euros for the privilege of taking over items like kitchen fixtures, light fittings and flooring, or even face starting entirely from scratch.

The Netherlands If you lived in the Netherlands just after the Second World War, chances are you’d have rented a home from a private landlord. But over the decades, with both owner-occupation and social housing booming, the private rented sector has been squeezed, falling from 60 per cent of the housing stock in 1947 to just 9 per cent in 2010, as private landlords sold up their portfolios. The Dutch social rented sector is a large one, with around half of all households living in a social home in many cities. And, unlike in Britain, the dividing lines between the social and private rented sectors are blurred, with similar rent levels, rent controls and often tenants with similar income levels tenants living in both. The maxim ‘you get what you pay for’ rings true in the Netherlands: rents are based on a detailed scoring system and homes are given points for everything from their proximity to good transport links and shops to their heating systems and kitchen and bathroom fixtures. Bernadet Tordoir, who rents her one-bedroomed flat in a historic building in central Amsterdam from a housing co-op says her rent of €700 a month is similar to what she might pay in the private sector. ‘I pay extra because of the building,’ she says. ‘It’s a corner apartment with high ceilings and lots of windows and I have a small garden. If you are not so demanding and don’t mind living on the outskirts of town, you can pay less.’ The ‘best’ properties, with rents of more than €680 per month, are not subject to rent controls. But for cheaper homes, whether private or social, initial rents and subsequent annual increases are set by the government. It may be good news for tenants, but critics claim it’s this tight regulation which has made the private rental sector unattractive to investors.

France Imagine being in your forties and having to send through details of your parents’ bank account before you’re allowed to rent a flat. Or being expected to pay up to €400 just to get a look at a list of homes which are up for rent, then finding out that most of them have already gone. That’s been the reality of life in France where high rents and a shortage of social housing have made life tough for would-be tenants. Katrina Kutchinsky spent two stints renting a home in Paris in her early twenties and says it’s tough to find an affordable place. ‘Both times it was really hard,’ she says. ‘The first time I ended up finding somewhere informally, but the second time I went through an agency and you needed a guarantor.’ France may have good protection in place for existing tenants, such as a ban on evictions during winter, but high rents in many cities have led to what French housing minister Cécile Duflot calls a ‘housing crisis weighing on French households’. The socialist government’s response is a radical one: last year it introduced a temporary freeze on rent increases for re-lets and this summer it announced plans to cap agents’ fees, ban fees for rental lists and introduce rent controls in designated ‘strained’ zones, including the cities of Marseille, Lyon, Montpellier and Paris. Landlords will benefit from a new insurance fund which will pay out if a tenant defaults on their rent. It’s all designed to address the inequality of a system where more than 20 per cent of the population rent privately, but average monthly rents vary wildly from under €6 per square metre in the rural Cantal department to more than €24 per square metre in Paris.

Spain When evicted families across Spain took to squatting in empty buildings it was perhaps the most visible sign of the economic crisis which has engulfed the country over the past few years. Before the housing market crashed, most Spaniards aspired to home ownership. But the sight of so many homes being repossessed, with banks taking all the profits even for mortgage holders who had paid in for years, has shifted the public mood. Renting, which had been on the decline for years and comprised less than a tenth of the housing stock in 2011, is now beginning to be seen as a safer, desirable option.

Yet with an unemployment rate of 27 per cent – rising to over 50 per cent for under-25s – many of those who might want to rent can’t afford to do so. Ana Barrera is 24 and still lives at home with her mother in a village outside Madrid. She has just finished university but is not working and so can’t afford a flat, even to share. ‘Things in Spain are difficult right now and even more so for young people,’ she says. ‘Lots of us would like to rent, but you’re lucky if you can do it.’ Rents in Madrid are not that expensive by European standards. But as Barrera points out, they are still unaffordable for young people like her who are either planning further study or unpaid work experience to improve their chances of employment. ‘It’s quite easy to find places to rent in Madrid,’ she says. ‘The cheapest are around €600 per month. It is normal to share a house or even a room. But it’s not easy to afford because salaries are not enough [a minimum wage job works out at between €650 and €750 per month].’ Tenants lucky enough to be able to afford it benefit from decent protection in Spain, with an initial tenancy period of five years and controls on rent increases.

Kate Murray is the former editor of Inside Housing and now writes for a range of national publications on housing and social policy

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Do your experiences make it hard for you to put down roots? I have this fantasy that if I had a home of my own, then I would make the most amazing art from ceramics, etchings, sewing, sculpture, oil paintings: a place for everything. Occasionally I look online and see some shack in the Outer Hebrides for around £20,000. That seems achievable, but somehow I never manage to save. Everything costs so much these days. There have been so many times in my life when I’ve lost everything. A year after my big solo show at Modern Art Oxford in 2007, I ended up broke and living in my car in Bloomsbury Square Car Park. I had a resident pass from when I had a lovely little flat there. I can

laugh about it now, but at the time I didn’t know what to do with myself.

How hard has it been to make your work while living in such small spaces? As long as you have some kind of materials you can make art. I made some of my largest paintings, including one of Pete Doherty [6ftx7ft] and Wonder Woman [9ftx10ft], while living in a small studio. I emptied the room and shoved everything into the kitchen. The canvases covered the entire floor. Wherever I am, I tend to gravitate towards a tiny corner with everything I need nearby. Ideally I like my bed to be as far away as possible from the art, so I can look at it with fresh eyes in the morning, but that’s

not always possible. I made some nice work in the front of a van once. You don’t even need much space or materials: you can make all sorts out of things in skips if you want to.

What’s your idea of domestic bliss? My ideal would be to share a home with a partner who is funny, kind, intelligent and handsome (to me). We would have dinner parties for friends; I would make paintings for the walls of the house and ceramics for the dinner table. The outside world of money and survival wouldn’t exist.

Find out more about Stella’s paintings, exhibitions and other work at stellavine.com

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Home is where the art is

Artist Stella Vine went from foster care and teenage pregnancy to selling her work to Charles Saatchi. Then she ended up living in a car park

Interview: Serena Kutchinsky Was the ‘Dorothy’ skirt that you painted for a recent Shelter auction a deliberate reference to the idea that there’s no place like home? I’m fascinated by the concept of home, especially as I’m always moving, but no: it didn’t cross my mind till later on that day. I just follow my instincts and improvise. I like the way the skirt came out cute and girlie. I found the process of making it immensely enjoyable, partly because sewing reminds me of my mum who passed away from a brain tumour in 2003. She was a seamstress and I still have one of her thimbles. She was quite absent for most of my life and I longed to spend time with her but my stepdad wouldn’t allow her to be with me. Sewing helps me feel closer to her.

What’s your definition of home? For me, it’s wherever my paints are. Ideally it would have a shower, but some of the places I’ve lived haven’t even had a toilet. What I need above all is an atmosphere that inspires creativity. I’m currently living in a small room in Camden, which has fantastic light. I’m fairly happy there. If I start to feel isolated I go for a long, soothing walk around the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Occasionally claustrophobia strikes and I decamp to the seaside in Cornwall or the North East. But London always draws me back.

You ran away from home at 13. How have your experiences of being in vulnerable situations shaped you? My mother got remarried when I was seven years old; we moved to Norwich and everything changed. My stepdad was a cruel man who enjoyed humiliating me. A lot of things happened which I know were wrong. It got to the point where my survival instinct kicked in and I knew I had to leave. I was fostered briefly but clashed with the family over my refusal to go to school – I wanted to self-educate in the library. I ended up living alone in a bedsit and fell into a relationship with the caretaker, who at 24 was ten years

my senior. By the time I was 16, I was pregnant. When you have those experiences at such a young age, it’s a struggle to stop seeing yourself as a victim, and you keep repeating the same patterns. Only now, at 44, have I ceased blaming myself for everything that went wrong.

Have you expressed your feelings about your past in your work? Although my work looks like it’s based on other people, it is extremely personal. My style could be described as “sickly sweet”, like that feeling you get when you eat too much birthday cake as child. Originally I wanted to be an abstract painter, like De Kooning or Pollock, but I got sidetracked. People, and in particular their eyes, hold a fascination for me – there’s so much fragility and complexity there. I usually end up projecting part of myself on to my subjects. That was the case with my painting of Rachel Whitear [a 21-year-old student who died from a heroin overdose in 2000] that Saatchi bought in 2004. She was a kid living on her own in a bedsit when she died and I identified hugely with her. The work provoked such a strong reaction that it caught me off guard. People accused me of capitalising on her tragic death to make

shocking art and become famous. I censored myself enormously after that.

You were briefly addicted to cocaine at the height of your success. How did that affect your ability to identify with the dark side of humanity? I started using cocaine in 2005 when I was given a show at London’s Hamiltons Gallery after David LaChapelle dropped out. I had just over two weeks to make all the work and was painting flat out. After a few sleepless nights, I contacted a local dealer and bought some cocaine. I desperately needed to stay awake to finish the work. The show was okay, considering the short timescale, but I ended up with a bad coke habit. I couldn’t even go out to buy milk without having a line. For the next six months I just stayed in, worked and took coke. I painted all my Kate Moss pictures on it; it gave me the self-confidence I’d always lacked. Eventually, though, it all backfired: I was just falling to bits, a mess, painting six feet of brown sludge for hours on end, with a hefty £400-a-week habit which became hard to maintain. The whole experience changed me. I was depressed when I came off it – I didn’t seem to have the same natural energy as before. It reminded me how easy it is to get stuck on repeat in life.

Do you worry that your personal story might influence how people see your work? I found in the past that people on the periphery of the art world thought they could make money out of me, due to the press interest in my personal life, having been a stripper and single parent, plus the kind of work I was making: “celebrity”, as they saw it. Or they wanted to try to draw attention to their galleries through me. [It’s] exploitative, really: not respectful to my creativity. I’ve also encountered a lot of snobbery from people who seem to think that because I’m not educated I can’t make real art. It baffles me.

‘Dorothy’ skirt by Stella Vine, 2013

Stella and her brother in 1976

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These are real people Shelter have helped. To help even more people, go to shelter.org.uk/donatehere

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Cathy Come Home Ken Loach’s TV drama woke up the 1960s

to eviction and homelessness. Is it time for its twenty-first-century equivalent, asks Phil Hoad

ou know it’s coming; they know it’s coming. The wall-hangings have been taken down, a barricade mounted. But the bailiffs break down the door anyway, and, as the young mother and her family are chivvied out, the wall of faces in the yard outside seem to spell out her future:

no privacy, vulnerability, judged by society. Someone hassles them about storing their furniture. It feels inescapable. No wonder Ken Loach’s 1966 drama ‘Cathy Come Home’ became a milestone in British television. The eviction scene, which comes halfway through the descent from domestic bliss to destitution forced on Cathy (Carol White), is staged with the improvisational intuition Loach became known for. It is utterly raw, exactly as the director and journalist collaborator Jeremy Sandford, who wrote the story, intended, as they broached the housing crisis of the time. They shot ‘Cathy Come Home’ in three weeks, deriving as much of it as possible from real life, influenced by the Free Cinema documentary movement of the 1950s. White and her screen husband Ray Brooks trudged the streets of Camden, looking for accommodation for their ‘family’. Often turned down because they had children (played by White’s own kids), they would later return and offer the landlords £10 to use the footage in the film. Screened straight after the main evening news, in the BBC’s

‘Wednesday Play’ strand, Loach’s throbbing clot of social injustice must have seemed all the more immediate. It was watched by 12 million people – a quarter of the population – and provoked a storm of calls to Television Centre. At the same time, Shelter’s founders were nearing the end of a year of research and preparation, and it launched two weeks after the play was screened on November 15. The drama was shown in parliament, and later debated, leading to legislation changes that prevented mothers and fathers being separated in emergency accommodation. Homelessness didn’t disappear, of course, and now we face a new housing shortage in London, as well as renewed deprivation in the rest of austerity-hit Britain. Is it time for another ‘Cathy Come Home’? It’s far more difficult today to summon up the kind of aesthetic freshness with which Loach galvanised TV viewers and politicians in 1966, and there’s almost no issue left capable of shocking audiences in the same way. Some message films, such as ‘Philadelphia’ or ‘Brokeback Mountain’ do manage to surf the zeitgeist. But the real gamechangers – ‘The Battle of Algiers’, ‘A Short Film About Killing’, ‘Super Size Me’ and ‘Cathy Come Home’ – alter its course, in their own significant way. Perhaps, like Cathy, because we’re so focused on the problem, these are the ones we almost never see coming.

Phil Hoad writes about cinema and globalisation for The Guardian

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September September 29 Berlin Marathon

How to kill three birds with one stone: visit one of Europe’s most popular and historic cities, improve your personal best (Berlin is perhaps the world’s fastest marathon course) and raise money to help tackle bad housing and homelessness, all in one trip. Email running@shelter.org.uk for more info.

Party Conferences

September 14 -18 Liberal Democrats conference Glasgow

September 22 - 25 Labour Party conference Brighton

September 29 – October 2 Conservative Party conference Manchester

The political parties are gathering for their annual conferences. Keep your eyes on the news: is housing on their agenda?

October University Charity of the Year

Why not turn rag week into a war on bad housing and homelessness? If you make Shelter your university’s Charity of the Year, we’ll provide all the support you’ll need to make it a success. Ideas, resources, expert fundraising advice and the opportunity to see exactly what we do with all your hard-earned money are all part of the package. Call us on 0344 515 2130 or email students@shelter.org.uk to learn how.

October 6 Royal Parks Half-Marathon

There are few more picturesque races than this half-marathon through four of London’s parks. Shelter is fielding a team of more than 110, who aim to raise a combined £47,000 to help sustain our work. The race is fully subscribed, but to join the Shelter cheering team call 0344 515 1190 or email  running@shelter.org.uk.

November November 16 ‘Cathy Come Home’

On this day in 1966, Ken Loach’s groundbreaking ‘Cathy Come Home’ was first screened on the BBC. That night, 12 million people, one in four Britons, saw Carol White’s brilliant portrayal of a young mother evicted from her home and separated from her children. The overwhelming response to the film helped to make Shelter’s official launch 16 days later both timely and successful. See p44.

Christmas campaign

80,000 children in Britain will be homeless this Christmas. Be part of our Christmas campaign and make a difference. shelter.org.uk/Christmas

December December 1 Shelter’s birthday

After a year of research and preparation Shelter was formed on December 1 1966 by the Rev Bruce Kenrick and Des Wilson in response to the slum landlords of Notting Hill, such as the notorious Peter Rachman. In its 47 years it has campaigned relentlessly for better housing. We’ve provided crucial legal advice to thousands of households. Despite the national economic complacency of the boom years, we’ve scored significant successes in recent times, helping push housing up the political agenda, with Scotland’s landmark 2012 Commitment and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme in England.

Throughout December Great Gingerbread House Sale

With Christmas just days away, you can get the kids involved in the festivities with the annual Great Gingerbread House Sale. Bake, build and sell a gingerbread house for Shelter. If you’re a teacher, Christmas really does come early because we’ve developed a lesson plan to get your whole class cooking. For more details, go to shelter.org.uk/gingerbread.

January Throughout January Volunteer in a Shelter shop

With your New Year’s resolutions still fresh in the mind, now’s a great time to volunteer to work in one of Shelter’s charity shops. We have dozens of branches on high streets nationwide, all raising valuable funds for our advice services and campaigns. Volunteering is also a valuable way to enhance your CV and get an NVQ qualification. You can even pick up a few bargains for yourself! There’s more info online at shelter.org.uk.

Advice Sharing

Shelter has loads of brilliant advice services, and we want more people to know about them. You can get advice on all aspects of housing here shelter.org.uk/advice In January and February we’ll be running a campaign to promote and share our advice – keep a look out and help us to help more people.

February February 16 Brighton Half-Marathon

If you do like to run beside the seaside then the Brighton Half-Marathon is the race for you. Sign up to join the Shelter team, secure in the knowledge that Brighton’s seafront course is actually one of the calendar’s flattest, despite the hilly South Downs surroundings. Or if the 13.1-mile race doesn’t appeal, you can take the easy route by joining our cheering teams who line the course to encourage the runners. Email running@shelter.org.uk for details.

February 19 Stand Up for Shelter

The annual comedy spectacular returns to the Hammersmith Apollo in February 2014. The details for this year’s line-up aren’t finalised as we go to press, but the 2013 event saw Christian O’Connell compere a night of star-studded talent led by Jimmy Carr, Sara Pascoe, Tim Minchin and Alistair McGowan, raising over £100,000 for Shelter’s campaigning. Register your interest at shelter.org.uk/standup.

March March 4 Vertical Rush

This dizzying event sees runners – or, for the less than super-fit, walkers – race to the top of Old Broad Street’s Tower 42, the second-highest building in the City of London. That’s 42 floors, 920 steps and no lifts. But we promise you the views are worth it once you get there. The 2013 climb raised over £300,000 to combat poor housing and homelessness. There’s more info online at shelter.org.uk.

March Architect in the House

Ever fancied overhauling your house but don’t know where to begin? This Shelter scheme in association with RIBA pairs you up with a chartered architect for a short consultation about making the most of your home. There’s no fee and no obligation for this, but we suggest a donation to Shelter of £45. To register go to architectinthehouse.org.uk.

Year-round Shelter Scotland: Reclaim Your Fees

Anyone who’s rented property via an agent knows it can be a minefield of fees and extra charges. These are illegal in Scotland. If you’ve been charged, either at the start of a contract or for its renewal, visit Shelter Scotland’s step-by-step guide to reclaiming your money. For a full breakdown of what you can and can’t be charged for, and how to get your money back, go to reclaimyourfees.com.

Let’s Get Quizzical

Ever fancied yourself as the office mastermind, or even as a quick-witted quizmaster? You can get your workplace fundraising and dazzle your colleagues with your knowledge of ephemera by signing up to Shelter. We’ll send you a range of prepared quizzes for free. In return, you raise some money and show off your smarts. There’s more info on the Shelter website.

School Sleepover

This is a great way to raise awareness among schoolkids about the 80,000 children in Britain who don’t have a proper home. Raise some money for Shelter and we supply information, promotional material and activity packs to make your sleepover both easy to run and a fun night to remember. Sign up at www.shelter.org.uk.

Campaigning

We’re campaigning for better housing. Get yourself on our campaigns page so that you can be part of the change, too. More info at shelter.org.uk or if you’re in Scotland, scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_involved.

Private Renting Campaign

Nine million people in England now rent their homes. And with soaring costs, rocketing letting-agent fees and poor conditions, renting isn’t working. People deserve better. We want the Government to fix renting. Find out more and join the campaign at shelter.org.uk/campaigns/fixing_private_renting

46 47Shelter Calendar Shelter Calendar

Shelter calendar 2013-2014

Words: Steve Yates

49

These are real people Shelter have helped. To help even more people, go to shelter.org.uk/donatehere

48 We used to live Here

Though not to the extent of Mount Buggery in Australia or the Albanian village of Crap, the ancient settlement of Grimspound, high up on Dartmoor, has a pungent kind of name. This Bronze Age site is a remarkable and atmospheric place. Grimspound is visible from miles around. The perimeter wall forms a rough circle with a diameter of around 100 metres. Inside are the remains of 24 circular hut dwellings, each about four metres across. To the south east rise the dark crenellations of Hound Tor, thought to have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. Legend has it that these grave granite outcrops are a pack of hounds turned to stone. Even with cars visible in the distance and a smartphone constantly ready to bleep into life in your pocket, Grimspound and Hound Tor are places where it’s possible to feel alone, removed from the modern world. These arrays of granite include the remnants of hearths where flaming oak logs once warmed their inhabitants. What must it have been like, sat among these stones, inside these shelters?

The settlement is thought to have originated around 1,300 BC. The name ‘Grimspound’, however, hasn’t been with us nearly that long. It was first established in 1797 by the Cornish clergyman Richard Polwhele. Eighteenth-century religious functionaries clearly had time on their hands, and Polwhele was a prolific writer. His works include the polemical poem ‘The Unsex’d Females’, a reaction to the increasingly assertive voice of women in England at the time. In the poem, the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft is depicted as Satan. Polwhele was maybe preoccupied by the diabolical. The English Place-Name Society argues that ‘grim’ is an Anglo-Saxon word for the devil. But it is also rooted in the old Norse word ‘Grimr’, an alternative name for the god Odin. The historiographical sources regarding Grimspound are many and various. My personal favourite is the settlement’s inclusion in The Dartmoor Game (‘Ideal for the Family – more Fun than a Guide Book!’), produced by Ed-U-Games of Newton Abbot, just a few miles south of the site.

I visit Grimspound on a lovely summer afternoon. Bilberries and the yellow petals of tormentil sit among the heather. Overhead, ravens flap and kronk. Humankind is also evident, in exotic variety. A Spanish family look around the ancient settlement, as do a middle-aged German couple. Just two miles across the vale is Dartmoor’s famous Warren Inn, where food is available in exchange for our own bronze artefacts (they take cards if you aren’t in the habit of carrying a barrowload of two-pence pieces around). In the hearth burns a fire; it’s said to have been continuously alight since 1845. Research suggests that the Bronze Age climate may have been warmer than today, but the elements don’t have to be cold to carry danger. Grimspound’s ancient dwellings, once covered in turf, heather or thatch, are so very different to the habitation we enjoy today. This was the most shelter there was for people 3,000 years ago, the best our ancestors had to hide them from a hostile universe.Roy Wilkinson is the author of ‘Do It for Your Mum’ (Rough Trade)

We used to live Here Grimspound

We start our series of explorations of the places where our ancestors once lived with Dartmoor’s finest Bronze Age settlement

Words: Roy Wilkinson. Portrait: Dominic Brandi

here

‘When my dad came home from work on a Friday, my mum would buy a Mars Bar for him and hide it under

the living room sideboard’

51The house I grew up in

was born in Horsham in a purpose-built flat, but the first house I remember, the one which played host to most of my formative experiences, was in a suburb

of Reigate called Woodhatch. The road we lived on was called Hartswood Avenue and, for my parents, it was quite a step up. Not only was it their first house, but it was on a corner, so it had a bigger garden than all the other houses. It was a classic 1930s semi. I think I was pretty happy throughout that time. My parents were younger than most of my friends’ parents. They got married when they were 19, and I think that back in those days, that meant less going out, less buying records and more DIY. In the ’60s, there was a huge DIY boom. Magazines like Practical Householder used to have a circulation that titles like Heat might have now. There was some bloke on TV and he was like, ‘If you live in an old Victorian house, why don’t you do this?’ In 2013, you’d throw your hands up in horror at the thought of ripping

50 The house I grew up in

out all those original features, but that’s what everyone did. So my memories of the weekends revolve around my dad going to the timber yard, then undertaking major work around the house while I watched ‘World of Sport’ or ‘Grandstand’. In the week, he was an insurance and pensions advisor, then on Saturday we’d see him knocking the wall down between the sitting room and the dining room. ‘Through- lounges’ were de rigueur at the time. We had a larder with a wooden door which was really nice, but it went. One day it suddenly became part of the kitchen. I’m now much older than he was when he was doing these sorts of jobs, but the idea of even beginning to take on a job as big as that is enough to make me anxious. Mostly, I tended to stay out of the way, in my own world. I loved playing in the garden, playing football under this big elm tree which, of course, didn’t survive when Dutch elm disease swept through the country – that

was really sad. By the age of six, I must have started taking a keen interest in records, because I took a load of them out into the garden, to somehow ‘play’ with them. I left them out there and when I returned a bit later, they had warped in the sun. I remember holding up this ruined seven-inch, looking at the label and seeing that it was ‘Play with Fire’ by The Rolling Stones and thinking that was ironic – but of course I didn’t know that was the word for it! Records were obviously a big deal in terms of furnishing my interior world, and a lot of the conversations I had with my dad helped the process along. I remember him telling me about his schooldays which, compared to most parents, were quite recent in his memory. He told me about how ‘Sixteen Tons’ by Tennessee Ernie Ford had been one of his favourite records. He made the mistake of mentioning it at school, but this was just after ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ had come out and his schoolfriends were like,

The house I grew up in... Bob Stanley

Interview: Pete Paphides

‘What? That old crap!’ Things had changed in a matter of weeks. We used to eat dinner at the table together. Always. It never occurred to me that it might even be an option to eat elsewhere. Apart from the occasional Berni Inn, eating at a restaurant never happened. It seemed exotic and a bit frightening to me. I was terrified by the idea of doing something inappropriate in a restaurant: that was probably a result of my mum telling me that if you misbehaved at the table, you’d get thrown out. That’s what I was like, though, deferential, I suppose. My sister had wooden bars on her bedroom window, but not me. I was the ‘good’ one! We both looked forward to getting comics every week. Jules had The Beano and I had The Dandy – although obviously, we would read each other’s copies. Pete [Wiggs, from Saint Etienne] was a frequent presence in the house. Every Thursday we’d go to each other’s house after school. He was a Whoopee! reader. Like most families, we were probably trying to assimilate ourselves into some sort of normality. There was a church nearby which, weirdly, I can remember almost nothing about. But we would go through

phases when we would all have to go there every Sunday. After about five or six weeks, it would get too boring and we’d fall out of the habit. Other rituals were slightly odder. When my dad came home from work on a Friday, my mum would always buy a Mars Bar for him and hide it under the living room sideboard. They’d forgotten about that until I reminded them about it on their anniversary a few years back. Friday nights we would also go to the supermarket. Before that opened we used to go to the old Sainsbury’s in Reigate which still had a cheese counter. I was eye-level with the cheese wire as my mum stood there specifying exactly how much cheddar we wanted. My first record came from Woolworths in Redhill – ‘Amateur Hour’ by Sparks. That would have been a few months before we left the house in Woodhatch. My dad was a hi-fi buff, so when he upgraded to a Bang & Olufsen deck with a Rogers amp, I got his old 78 wind-up gramophone and the Russ Conway and Bill Haley records he used to play on it. I had to get permission to play my new records on the Bang & Olufsen. Records were a big deal, but then so was television: ‘Scooby-Doo’; ‘Josie and the

Pussycats’. Early on, [early ’70s children’s TV programme] ‘Mary Mungo and Midge’ was pivotal. It seemed like the height of modernity, this depiction of a family living in a purpose-built flat. Later on, I think that might have helped inform my decision to move to Highpoint [Berthold Lubetkin’s 1930s modernist apartment block in Highgate, north London]. I love being near amenities if they’re well maintained. The swimming pool and the library – what’s not to love about that sort of life? I think there’s a pretty clear line between where I grew up, the way I live now and the projects to which Saint Etienne put their name. I guess what I’m describing is a typical upbringing in suburbia. A lot of musicians and writers have loaded suburbia with negative connotations. I’ve never really understood that.

Bob Stanley’s new book Yeah Yeah Yeah is published by Faber on October 3rd.

Pete Paphides was rock critic for The Times between 2005 and 2010. He makes documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and BBC 6 Music

I

From

Louis Theroux | Alain De Botton The house I grew up in | Songs from a room | Housing Co-Ops

In the next issue of , March 2014

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