Article

Comment

Community

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 In the end the proposals were quietly withdrawn.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.

Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

Politics

War & peace

17 June 2025

5 min read

Iranians long for regime change, but weigh up the cost

Dreams are easier to utter than act upon

Steve Dew-Jones

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Smoke rises from the site of a bomb amid a high wide view of a city at twlight

Tehran.

I received an unexpected response from an Iranian friend of mine this week after asking how he and others were feeling in the wake of the ongoing crisis.

My friend - like many, a staunch advocate of regime change in Iran - told me that despite his long-standing enmity against the Islamic Republic and its leaders, the conflict had if anything brought Iranians together against a new, common enemy.

For while he and many others would love to live in an Iran that offered them greater freedoms, they are also fiercely proud of their country and, as he put it, will seek to defend it at all costs.

Both this friend and other Iranians that I have spoken to since the bombs began to fall last Friday have highlighted how Iran’s “territorial integrity” has been breached by Israel, in violation of international law.

And so while some might perceive an attack on a tyrannical regime and its nuclear arsenal to be an exception to this rule, it should hardly surprise us that those within the country affected may take a different view.

Both the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the exiled crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi - whom many perceive to be the most realistic leader of any new revolution - have used their platforms to call on Iranians to seize this moment to rise up and reclaim their land.

Yet, with bombs falling all around them and a weakened regime still known to be capable of brutally responding to any attempts to revolt, such dreams are easier to utter than to act upon.

Meanwhile, as Tehranis are encouraged to flee their city and some have already seen homes, loved ones or livelihoods destroyed, it may well be that Iranians have other things on their minds at present than attempting to overthrow their oppressors.

One very present concern for many Iranians at the moment will be the fate of loved ones who remain in prisons as the aerial bombardment continues.

Tehran’s Evin Prison, for example, is on the edge of District 3, which residents were told they must evacuate on Monday ahead of another onslaught.

But as the Australian-British former political prisoner Kylie Moore-Gilbert noted in an interview with Sky News, the prisoners in Evin had no option to flee and instead found themselves locked inside tiny cells, hearing the sound of bombs and rumours of what was taking place but without any real clarity.

“Nobody's going to have a clue what's going on, and it's utterly terrifying to think that you're locked in a place, you can't flee, you hide, you can't take action to protect yourself, and you don't have access to information,” she said.

There is not even any guarantee, Moore-Gilbert noted, that these prisoners will be being taken care of by the prison guards, who will no doubt have other things on their mind.

“There are literally thousands, dozens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people in prison in Iran, most of them Iranian civilians,” she said. “The prison population inside that country is enormous. The conditions are dire in the best of days. Do they even have electricity? Do they have running water? What on earth is going on? My heart goes out to them.”

Among the many prisoners in Evin are a handful of Christians, detained or serving sentences on charges related to their religious activities but framed as “actions against national security”.

Like many Iranians, Christians, as a long-oppressed minority, have every right to hope for a change in the country and a future Iran that would better embody the prophetic words from the Book of Isaiah, believed to have found their fulfilment in Jesus, of “freedom for the captives” and “good news for the poor”.

And yet Iranian Christians must also wrestle with the biblical command to “submit to the governing authorities” and to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”.

It is, then, perhaps no surprise that in recent years, as hopes of regime change have regularly come and gone, that Iran’s Christians have tended to focus their prayers instead on the increase of “God’s kingdom”, as many more Iranians have continued to find new hope in the Christian faith.

Such hopes, in theological terms, are built on firmer foundations than any dreams for a change in the nature and essence of tyrannical regimes like the one currently still clinging onto power in Tehran.

And whatever the future brings, when this current crisis is over, the Iranians who have found their ultimate source of hope and joy in Jesus Christ will know that they still have something to hold onto, whatever they may have lost: the promise of God’s presence with them today and a bright future for tomorrow.

It may be that another revolution is what many Iranians crave, but there is also something revolutionary, I believe, about the prayer that Jesus taught, which leaves the ultimate course of our lives in the hands of God.

“Your will be done,” Christians have prayed throughout the centuries; and Iranian Christians will continue to pray this whatever the future holds for them.

It is perhaps little wonder, then, that it is the Gospel message that Iranian Christians have continued to preach, in spite of persecution, and regardless of whichever direction the whims of popular support have turned.

One of the passages that an Iranian colleague of mine most frequently recites in our team meetings is the call for us to “act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God”, and I was reminded of this as I noted the response of British-Iranian bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani to the current crisis.

The bishop, the bookies’ favourite to be the next Archbishop, prayed simply for the Lord to “have mercy”.

As a lover of The Lord of the Rings, I am also reminded of the line from Gandalf, when Frodo is claiming that Bilbo should have finished off Gollum when he had the chance:

“Do not be too quick to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

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