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 In the end the proposals were quietly withdrawn.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

Politics

Sport

9 September 2025

5 min read

Bad blood is damaging both football and politics

Are we all in the stands baying for blood?

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A view from a football stand over heads to the pitch.

Steven Collomb-Clerc on Unsplash.

Am I going mad? It definitely feels like I’m going mad. Let me tell you two tales, one about an ugly football match, the other about the early release of a ‘political’ prisoner’. It feels as if society, not just the fans in the stands, are baying for blood. I’m mad about it. Here's why.

There’s been little love lost between my team Liverpool and their recent opponents Newcastle United.

Liverpool’s crime? Wanting to buy Newcastle’s striker, Alexander Isak. How dare they!

If reports are to be believed – and everything should be viewed with raised eyebrows when it comes to football transfers – Isak informed Newcastle of his desire leave at the end of last season and was given assurances he would be able to. Liverpool, with no recognised striker following Diogo Jota’s death placed a bid of around £110 million.

A British transfer record fee. As an opening bid. A fee subsequently described as “disrespectful.” I feel like I’m going mad. If anyone would like to ‘disrespect’ me with £110,000,000, please let me know and I’ll send you my bank details.

The game’s turning point is a tackle by Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon on Virgil Van Dijk, Liverpool’s captain, just before half-time.

Gordon comes flying in, studs up, raking the back of Van Dijk’s leg. It is a deeply unprofessional tackle from Gordon. A cynical attempt to hurt a colleague with no discernible attempt to win the ball. It’s a tackle that’s beneath him, frankly.

By the time Anthony Gordon lunges in, the tone of the match is clear: we’re here to cause harm to anyone in a red shirt. (And the Newcastle fans are still in the stands cheering them on).

At the end of the day, I’m just glad Liverpool won. But I am genuinely baffled and alarmed by the amount of normally level-headed people who became intent on causing harm because of a (potential) transfer. Bad blood is flowing, indeed rushing to the head of many of them.

Most of all, I’m glad Liverpool won because, when I say what I’m about to say, you know it’s not coming from a place of bitterness that my football team lost a match. Because another story this week has left me feeling like I’m going mad: the release of Lucy Connolly from prison.

In July 2024, three young girls were stabbed to death at a dance class in Southport. In the aftermath, amid (false) reports that the killer was an asylum seeker, riots broke out across the country as people targeted mosques, asylum seeker accommodation, and even libraries.

In the midst of this, Lucy Connolly – whose husband was, at the time, a Conservative county councillor – tweeted:

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the [f***ing] hotels full of the [b***ards] for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government & politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.”

Having left prison, Connolly told The Telegraph that she was a “political prisoner” and that Keir Starmer “needs to look at what people's human rights are, what freedom of speech means and what the laws are in this country.”

The irony of her saying this in an interview with a national newspaper was apparently lost on her.

Am I going mad? It definitely feels like I’m going mad.

Lucy Connolly encouraged people to burn down hotels with people inside. To spill blood. She pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing ‘threatening or abusive’ written material on X. She literally admitted to doing this in a court of law.

But she is now being hailed in some quarters as a political martyr and champion of free speech. Let’s have it right: you are free to say what you want, but you are not free from the consequences of your speech. Whether you like it or not, migrants and asylum seekers are made in the image of God, as we all are, and are beloved by the creator of the universe. None of us has the right to end their lives. Incitement of violence towards them is rightly a crime.

She deserves to be in prison.

The people who rioted last year are ultimately responsible for their actions. But Lucy Connolly – and everyone else who incited violence in the aftermath of the Southport attacks – is also partly to blame for cultivating a society in which thugs feel as though that is an acceptable course of action. Now she is released from prison, every media outlet, every interviewer, every politician who repeats her reality-defying nonsense without challenge is as culpable as she is for fostering this climate of violence. This is before we even begin to talk about the record numbers of asylum seekers who have already died in our care.

It was ultimately Anthony Gordon’s stupid decision to go in studs-up on Van Dijk. But referee Simon Hooper and the Newcastle fans should reflect on their part in fostering a climate of violence in which Gordon’s felt his decision was reasonable, too.

We are all Simon Hooper. We are all the referee. When we allow rhetoric to become calls for violence, this has real-world consequences. People get hurt and killed. Blood is spilled. We are all responsible for the society in which we live, and the rhetoric of the debate that occurs therein.

It’s not just febrile Newcastle fans that are losing their grip on reality: there seems to be a society-wide willingness simply to bypass the concrete facts of reality to further personal ideologies. The more people like Lucy Connolly are rehabilitated by media whitewashing, the more statements like “set fire to all the [f***ing] hotels full of the [b***ards] … if that makes me racist, so be it” become acceptable, the less safe the most vulnerable in society become and the more likely they are to be killed.

That’s the nub of it. Lucy Connolly should be in prison because what she said leads to people being killed. No-one should have been surprised when Anthony Gordon went in on Van Dijk that night. No-one should feign surprise when migrants and asylum seekers are eventually killed on the basis of rumour and misinformation. Because they will be. And because we will all have been cheering on from the stands.

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