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Politics

8 November 2023

5 min read

A tents dispute about how to help the homeless

To house the homeless, argues Jon Kuhrt, silly soundbites and hasty policies need to be replaced with the right relationships and radical reform.

Jon Kuhrt

Jon Kuhrt is CEO of Hope into Action, a homelessness charity. He is a former government adviser on how faith groups address rough sleeping.

In an underpass a pedestrian passes and look at the tent of a homeless person.

Spielvogel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

2011: London’s Westminster City Council proposes byelaws to ban rough sleeping and to prevent groups distributing food to people in need, known as ‘soup runs’, in the Victoria area.

The proposals caused an almighty uproar from charities and community groups and demonstrations outside the council offices. In addition, both the London Mayor Boris Johnson, and the Conservative central government spoke out against the plans. In the end the proposals were quietly withdrawn.

At the time I was Director of the West London Mission, a homelessness charity based in Westminster. We worked closely with both churches and the council but we publicly disagreed with the plans because they were divisive, polarising and unworkable.

‘Lifestyle choice’

2023: The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, makes comments on social media about cracking down on rough sleepers who sleep in tents. Among other comments, Braverman said:

"We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”

Again, Braverman’s comments have provoked an avalanche of criticism. In the middle of a housing and cost of living crisis, the accusation that people living in tents are simply making a ‘lifestyle choice' is rightly seen by many as simplistic, harsh and deeply unhelpful to addressing the serious issue of rough sleeping.

Nothing represents UK poverty and exclusion with such visceral power as the sight of someone huddling in a doorway. Therefore, to the average person, providing help to rough sleepers makes sense. Banning help appears harsh and inhumane. These are issues that need talking about carefully and compassionately.

After 25 years of working for homeless charities, I worked for four years in the Government’s Rough Sleeping Initiative as an Adviser on how faith and community groups addressed homelessness. Building trust and cooperation between charities, churches and government was the key focus of my work.

And probably the most sensitive of all issues is how the outdated ‘Vagrancy Act’ of 1824 could be replaced. I know what frustration the Home Secretary’s ill-judged comments will cause to those in government working hard on reducing rough sleeping.

Dangerous and insecure

But whilst it’s right to condemn Braverman’s comments, we have to consider how we respond and not simply add to the unhelpful polarisation of these issues. The answer to anti-tent rhetoric is not to encourage people to give out more tents.

It may sound obvious, but the key thing to focus on is the welfare of rough sleepers at the heart of this discussion. And that does not mean we endorse every form of help that is offered.

The truth is that the rise in the use of cheap tents to sleep rough in is a genuine problem that local councils and charities have been struggling to address. They often create dangerous and insecure environments and can easily mask people’s serious declines in physical and mental health.

Christian response

A few years ago, I worked closely with All Saints Church in the centre of Northampton because they had 15 tents pitched in their churchyard. The drug use, defecation and other behaviours of those living in the tents were genuinely anti-social and problematic. Tensions with the council were rising and the vicar, Oliver Coss, was grappling with what the right Christian response was. Of course, there was genuine housing need in the town but what was happening in his churchyard was no good for anyone.

Through careful discussions, we brokered a plan of joint action between the church, the local authority and the key local charity. Those sleeping rough in the churchyard were given notice and were told the tents would be removed on a certain date but alongside this, interviews and offers of housing were made to everyone. I have huge respect for the way Rev.Coss navigated these tricky waters with resolve and compassion. He took heat, especially when the national press picked up the story but he steered a course which was genuinely best for all concerned. Theologically, his actions were the right blend of grace and truth.

Relationship and trust

Last winter I was involved in a similar way with an encampment in the park right behind my house in south London. It was causing serious concern to many local people due to the fires being lit, rubbish piling up and the vermin it attracted. I got to know almost all of the occupants of the camp as they attended a drop in meal I run at my church. The relationship and trust we developed helped me liaise between them and the council’s rough sleeping coordinator and this led to the camp being cleared and each of them offered temporary accommodation.

Informed debate

Rather than hasty policies or silly soundbites, we need a more honest and informed public discussion about rough sleeping. Addressing homelessness is complex because it involves an interweaving of structural injustice and the personal challenges that individuals face. Simplistic comments may work well on social media, but they don’t help people in the real world.

Enforcement is not the dirty word it is often made out to be – sometimes it is a vital ingredient in helping someone change their life. But in order to work, it must always be accompanied by a valid offer of accommodation, a meaningful step off the streets. And for too many, especially non-UK nationals, no such step exists.

Radical reform

Housing should be the key issue in the next election. We need urgent and radical policy reform to build more social housing. Record numbers are housed in expensive temporary accommodation which is causing bankruptcy in some local authorities. Millions of pounds of public money has been wasted in housing people for years in hotels which could have been used so much more productively.

We need more of the longer-term, community-based solutions to homelessness such as those pioneered by Hope into Action. We attract investment to buy houses which we turn into homes for people who have been homeless. In addition to professional support, each house is connected to a local church who provide friendship and community.

People sleeping rough in tents is not a ‘lifestyle choice’. It is the visible tip of a vast homelessness iceberg in this country caused by relational poverty and chronic underinvestment in affordable housing. And if we do not address the problems beneath the waterline, then we should not be surprised to see more tents appearing in our towns and parks.

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Truth and Trust

14 November 2025

5 min read

The ancients had the right words for Trump’s tussle with the BBC

Can the truth be concealed?

Hal St John

Hal is a theologian and writer based in London.

A composite images shows the entrance to the BBC on one side and Donald Trump on the other

BBC.

The recent controversies surrounding the BBC's leadership and the lawsuit brought by Donald Trump may appear, at first glance, to be merely another chapter in the ongoing drama of contemporary politics and media. Yet for those with eyes to see, something far older and more profound lies beneath the surface turbulence—a perennial struggle concerning the very nature of truth itself, one that reaches back to the dawn of Western thought and touches the deepest springs of our common life.

The sequence of events is itself instructive. The disturbances at the Capitol occurred on January 6, 2021. More than three years thereafter, the BBC's Panorama programme broadcast an investigation examining the relationship between Mr Trump's rhetoric—his exhortation to "fight like hell"—and the violence that ensued. The programme did not fabricate a narrative but rather sought to interpret one, attempting to hold words and their consequences together within a coherent moral framework. This work was, in its essence, what the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides termed Aletheia: truth understood as 'unconcealment', the patient labour of bringing into public view that which has been hidden or obscured.

A vocation

When the crisis deepened, the BBC's then Director of News, Deborah Turness, reaffirmed the Corporation's mission as the pursuit of truth "with no agenda". It was a well-intentioned defence, though perhaps insufficiently bold. For the BBC's founding vision was never a pursuit of neutrality as an end in itself, but rather the pursuit of truth in service of the common good—a vision given permanent expression in the inscription carved into the very walls of Broadcasting House:

"This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God... It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good harvest... that the people, inclining their ear to whatsoever things are beautiful and honest and of good report, may tread the path of wisdom and uprightness."

This inscription is no mere ornament. It constitutes a theological statement concerning the vocation of public speech. The call to sow "good seed"—echoing Jesus’ parable of the sower in St Matthew's Gospel—the summons to attend to whatsoever things are "honest and of good report" as St Paul exhorts in his letter to the Philippians, and the call to walk "in wisdom and uprightness" from the book of Proverbs—all these speak to a moral order in which words are meant to bear fruit. Panorama's investigation may be understood as a contemporary attempt to fulfil this sacred charge: an inevitably human and imperfect effort to unconceal the connection between language and its consequences in the world.

The ancient force of oblivion

Mr Trump's response, however, embodies a different and equally ancient force: Lethe—the personification of oblivion and forgetfulness in Greek thought. His lawsuit is not simply a defence against an allegation he finds unwelcome. It represents, rather, a strategic campaign to enforce forgetfulness. What Trump has chosen to bring into the light is not his own intent or action, but rather the BBC's editorial process. By directing all attention toward the matter of editing, he seeks to bury and render forgotten the original and far more consequential question: the demonstrable connection between his words on the sixth of January and the violent response of his supporters. The strategy is to employ a minor unconcealment—the technical matter of the edit—in order to accomplish a major concealment: the causal chain linking rhetoric to riot.

This, then, is the quiet heart of the matter. The lawsuit functions as a modern political instrument deployed within an ancient philosophical conflict. It represents a deliberate choice for Lethe over Aletheia, aiming to dissolve the connection between word and reality, and to immerse the most uncomfortable truths in the waters of oblivion.

For Christians, this struggle occupies familiar ground. To stand for truth is not to claim infallibility—a pretension that belongs to God alone—but rather to participate in the slow, difficult work of revelation: to bring things into the light for the sake of healing and restoration. Whether in journalism, the Church, or the wider public square, truth remains first a vocation before it becomes a verdict.

The crisis at the BBC, therefore, is not merely about institutional governance or corporate reputation. It serves as a reminder that the pursuit of truth is always a contested act of unconcealment, perpetually threatened by the seductive pull of forgetfulness. In an age tempted by distraction and denial, even imperfect truth-telling becomes an act of faith—a wager that reality is trustworthy, that words have weight, that consequences follow causes.

A reason to persevere

This ancient struggle between unconcealment and oblivion offers perspective on our present moment. For those who hold religious faith, it recalls St John's testimony that "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not"—a conviction that truth ultimately prevails. For those who do not share such faith, the argument stands on its own philosophical ground: that truth-telling, however costly and imperfect, serves something greater than partisan advantage or institutional survival.

The inscription at Broadcasting House speaks to both believer and non-believer alike. Its prayer for "good seed" and "good harvest", its call to attend to things beautiful, honest, and of good report, articulates a civic ideal that transcends particular creeds. It suggests that public institutions bear a responsibility—not to be infallible, but to resist the gravitational pull of forgetfulness, to maintain the connection between words and their consequences, to choose unconcealment over oblivion.

Whether one grounds this commitment in theological conviction or in secular principle, the work remains the same: the slow, difficult labour of bringing uncomfortable truths into the light, trusting that a society capable of facing reality is stronger than one that retreats into comfortable fictions. In an age tempted by distraction and denial, this may be reason enough to persevere.

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