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 In the end the proposals were quietly withdrawn.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

Assisted dying

Death & life

Ethics

Politics

23 June 2025

4 min read

What will stop the culture of death that libertarian Britain has embraced?

Now we’re allowed to end life with impunity

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Diane Abbott speaks in the assisted dying debate.

Dianne Abbott MP speaks in the assisted dying debate.

Just a few days apart, two debates recently took place in the House of Commons concerning life and death. In the first, MPs voted to decriminalise late-term abortions. In the second, they voted for assisted dying. Both times, the reach of death grew a little longer.

Imagine a mother about to have a baby who is suddenly having grave doubts about whether she can manage a new child as the moment draws near. It’s not hard to sympathise with many in this situation, but rather than recommend she goes through with the birth, and perhaps putting the baby up for adoption for childless parents desperate to adopt, we now have passed legislation that allows us to terminate the baby’s life instead. Proponents argued this was to relieve a small number of women who had been prosecuted for late-term abortions. The reality is, however, that it will probably become more common. In the debate, Jim Shannon MP pointed out that in New Zealand, in the first year after their parliament voted the same way, late-term abortions increased by 43 per cent.

A baby a week before and a week after birth are virtually identical. Yet as a result of this bill, it will not be a criminal act to end the life of the first, but it will be to do the same to the second. What’s the betting that the logic of this will stretch before long to allowing parents to terminate the lives of newborn babies with a new limit – say up to one month after birth? The arguments will be exactly the same – sympathy for distressed parents who suddenly realise they cannot cope with a new life on their hands, especially if the baby is discovered to be flawed in some way. When emotional sympathy, personal choice and the rights of the mother over the baby become the only moral arguments, the logic is inevitable.

Despite the argument shifting rapidly against the Terminally Ill Adults Bill – the vote passed by 314 votes to 291, with 32 MPs apparently having changed their minds - it now looks likely that this second bill will pass into law in a few years’ time, despite scrutiny in the Lords.

Here on Seen & Unseen, we have scrutinised the arguments put forward for assisted dying over past months. We have argued about the unintended consequences for the many of permitting assisted dying for the few. In The Times a while ago, I argued that if ‘dignity’ means autonomy — my ability to choose the place, the time and the manner in which I die — there is no logical reason why we should refuse that right to someone who, for whatever reason feels their life is no longer worth living, however trivial we may feel their problems to be. With this understanding of dignity as unlimited choice, the slippery slope is not just likely, it is philosophically inevitable.

In both cases the logic of the arguments used means the march of our ability to bring about death will not stop with these measures, despite their proponents’ assurances that safeguards are in place.

These two votes reminded me of something Pope John Paul II once wrote. In an encyclical, Evangelium Vitae – the Gospel of Life - he warned that “we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between what he called a “culture of death” and a “culture of life”.

He warned that this “culture of death” would be “actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency.” It is, in effect, he argued, “a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or lifestyle of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of ‘conspiracy against life’ is unleashed.”

They were strong words, and in the UK at least, back in 1995, might have seemed alarmist. Yet I couldn't help thinking of them as these two bills passed through the UK’s national parliament. In both cases, the bills were introduced very rapidly with little time for serious moral deliberation. Both depended on emotional appeals to a small number of admittedly distressing cases without serious consideration for the wider cultural and philosophical ramifications of these seismic moves. Both encouraged the steady encroachment of death on demand.

What concerns me is what these bills say about the kind of culture we are becoming. MND sufferer Michael Wenham makes the point powerfully that this is all about autonomy and independence, a spurious kind of compassion, and the fact that palliative care is more expensive than subtly encouraging the dying to take their own life. Looking behind the arguments for compassion, it's not hard to spot the iron law of libertarian ideas of freedom, where individuals have absolute rights over their own lives and bodies that trump everything else. This is the kind of libertarian freedom that prizes personal autonomy above everything else and therefore sees our neighbours not so much as gifts to be valued and cherished, but limitations, or even threats to our precious personal freedoms.

Pope John Paul was right. It does seem that we are opting for a culture of death. And my fear is that it won’t stop here.

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