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 In the end the proposals were quietly withdrawn.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

Care

Comment

Mental Health

8 September 2025

4 min read

Suicide prevention cannot be done in isolation

Community response is needed, not just remote call-handling

Rachael Newham

Rachael is an author and theology of mental health specialist.

Three posters with suicide prevention messages.

Samaritans adverts.

Suicide is a tragedy that leaves devastation in its wake for individuals, families and communities - but it remains shrouded in stigma. Whilst those who die by suicide are grieved and mourned amongst their communities, those who experience suicidal thoughts or who survive suicide attempts are often dismissed as ‘attention-seeking’ or ‘dramatic’.

The truth is, our response as a society to suicide is one which often ignores those who are most vulnerable until it is too late. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, the number of people dying by suicide has risen steadily since 2021, and whilst some of this can be attributed to the way in which deaths are recorded, it also represents a real and urgent need to change the narrative around suicide and the suicidal.

As the need has risen, we have also seen that services seeking to support those struggling with rising costs and rising demand.

Just 64 per cent of urgent cases and 72 per cent of routine cases were receiving treatment within the recommended time frames and the proportion of NHS funding being allocated to mental health falling between 2018 and 2023 highlights that the parity of esteem for mental health promised back in 2010 seems to grow further away.

Against this backdrop, for over seventy years, the Samaritans have been synonymous with suicide prevention, working where the health service has struggled to be. It’s sometimes been referred to as the fourth emergency service and has been providing spaces, mainly staffed by volunteers, in person, on the phone and online for people to express their despair in confidence.

And yet earlier this year, it was announced that over the next decade, at least 100 of its branches would be closing, moving to larger regional working and piloting remote call-handling.

Whilst this might be an understandable move considering the economic landscape for the Samaritans, it risks not only a backlash from the volunteers upon which Samaritans relies but also reducing the community support that locally resourced hubs provide.

Suicide prevention cannot be done in isolation; it has to be done in and with community.

Even the most well-trained and seasoned volunteer might find particular calls distressing, and the idea that they would have to face these remotely, without other volunteers to support them, is concerning.

I think this needs to be a wake-up call, not just for the sector - but society as a whole. Because when it comes to suicide, we need to work together to see an end to the stigma and a change in the way people are supported.

Suicide prevention cannot be left up to charities, we all have a role to play.

It matters how we engage with one another, because suicide can affect anyone. There are undoubtedly groups within society who are at a higher risk (for example, young people and men in their middle age).

Still, nobody is immune to hopelessness, and even the smallest acts of kindness and care can help to prevent suicide.

In the Bible story of the Good Samaritan, from which Samaritans take its name, Jesus tell the story of a man brutally robbed and left for dead on the roadside. A priest and a Levite avoid the man and the help he so clearly needs, but a Samaritan (thought of as an enemy to Jesus’ audience) was the one to not only care for his physical wounds, but also pay for him to recuperate at an inn.

We need to have our eyes open to the suffering around us, but also a willingness to help. It probably won’t be by giving someone a lift on a donkey as it is in the story(!) but it will almost certainly involve asking the people we meet how they are and not only waiting for the answer, but following it up to enable people to share.

It might require us to challenge the language used around suicide; moving from the stigmatising “committing suicide” with its roots in the criminalisation of suicide which was present before 1962 to “died by suicide”, and shifting from terms like “failed suicide attempt” to “survived suicide attempt” so that those who must rebuild their lives after an attempt are met with compassion and not condemnation.

Above all, we need to be able to see beyond labels such as “attention seeking” or “treatment resistant” to reach the person whose hope has run dry, and allow our hope to be borrowed by those most in need, both through our language and our actions.

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