No Fixed Abode

The American poet Robert Frost wrote that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I have been very fortunate in my life, I have always had a place to go where I would be welcomed and the door would be opened with loving arms. It is that privilege that led me to get involved with a local homelessness charity several years ago. It was a step out of my (very comfortable) comfort zone, initially joining fundraising sleepouts before eventually volunteering in a frontline service and ultimately on the board of trustees.

I knew that this was a chance for me to meet and get to know people I would not otherwise connect with in any meaningful way and I knew that it was important for me to step outside of the coddled world I lived in to learn about other people’s realities. That time remains one of the most fulfilling of my life, not because of anything that I did, but because of the people I met and the impact they had on me. Whether staff, volunteers or service users, as the terminology called them, I was constantly inspired. Lives were being transformed before my eyes and even though in such a messy and chaotic environment “outcomes” were hardly ever perfect, they were remarkable.

By the time my direct involvement came to an end the pressures on the organisation were immense. Deep cuts to local authority funding meant there was a constant squeeze as more was demanded for less. I had become as concerned for the well-being of staff as I was for service users, with many of them on minimum wage and in danger themselves of requiring the very services they were working so hard to provide. Perhaps the saddest thing is that nothing is actually saved when cuts are made, people are just pushed between different services and geographies, as each one tries to keep this new need away from their vanishing budgets.

People are damaged, lives are lost, but we have cultivated a society in which we would rather have that than feel that someone else might be getting something for nothing, something that they don’t deserve. Whatever a person’s circumstances and however close we might be in reality to the same, we find ways to de-humanise and blame them. We feel more comfortable criminalising the homeless so that we can punish them, rather than help them. Covid-19 may have pushed the issue of homelessness out of minds a little, might have found a temporary plaster to cover this wound in our society, but the issues still lie below that veneer ready to break forth again.

It is in this context that I picked up Maeve McClenaghan’s new book No Fixed Abode – Life and Death Among the UK’s Forgotten Homeless. Maeve is an investigative journalist who came across the story of a homeless man, Tony, who froze to death in the garden of the house that he had lived in for decades but was evicted from when a spiral of addiction led him to missed payments and rising debts. Neighbours saw Tony walking towards the house and down the side passage to the garden, they saw him seated on the garden furniture in a light coat completely inappropriate to the weather, the emergency services were called but passed the problem amongst themselves until Tony was found dead the next morning. Maeve set out to find out how many people were dying on our streets, but no one was counting.

The book follows Maeve’s journey around the country learning about the reality of homelessness across the UK and the individual, personal stories that make up the national statistics. Along the way she meets people who are struggling to cope and people who are struggling to help, with in each case the machinations of government and authority seemingly for the most part just getting in the way. As a result the book is at turns heart-breaking, uplifting and frustrating. It isn’t that we cannot resolve the problem of homelessness, but that we actively choose not to and even to get in the way of those trying to improve things for some of our most vulnerable people.

Some of the stories are remarkable but we have to be careful not to use them as a benchmark for who we will and will not help. Hamid’s story, for example, is very appealing, an academically brilliant man traumatised by conscription into the Iran-Iraq war he almost ended up working with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University but instead died in a hostel after years of living in a car in a supermarket car park. Hamid might in another life have been a friend, he deserves our help, but not those others.

It is worrying to hear government ministers talk in the terms of not deserving our help. When faced with people drowning in our seas the first thought should be pulling them out, not shutting down the channel. When a person starves on our streets the first reaction should be horror at a failure of our society. We have made compassion a weakness to be mocked when it should be the cornerstone of everything we do, especially our public servants.

When I volunteered in a service for older homeless men with long term drug or alcohol dependency there was a mix of characters and back stories. Some were transforming before my eyes, others were still addicted and might one day be friendly and chatty but another be completely blank, eyes glazed by amphetamines. We cannot choose who to help and who to not, that isn’t our place.

We also have to accept that you cannot force help on someone who doesn’t want it and the help we offer may not be wanted, but we can still walk alongside someone without expectation, so that at least whatever happens it doesn’t happen alone. Essentially, we have to re-learn to care about others. After decades of elevating the self, promoting greed and denying the existence of community we have hardened our hearts to those in need. For our own sakes and theirs, we need to break down the physical and metaphorical walls that divide us and meet again as fellow people.

No Fixed Abode is published on 17 September 2020 by Picador. Read it with an open mind and an open heart and be changed.

A sensitive statement of what modern homelessness is like, with lack of support, inequality and austerity cited as the main reasons. I am not ashamed to say I cried through the stories I read there, Hamid, Jayne and the others. All proof that it can happen to anyone. What is to be done? Maybe the coronavirus marks a turning point, and maybe it doesn't, just because they found enough money for the homeless to avoid spreading Covid, does not mean it will continue. Already there are signs of the money spent on hotels for the homeless being exhausted. I personally hope it does mark a turning point in attitudes, but I will wait and see. A powerful book, one I would recommend without question.

A fantastic, in-depth look at one of the most important social issues of our day, and especially important in the context of 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic. McClenaghan explores her subjects with grace and sensitivity, all the while presenting steps for actionable change--a must-read for anyone interested in social justice and making the world a better place post-COVID.

I was close to tears so many times reading this book. Maeve McClenaghan seems to have put her heart and soul into researching this sensitive topic. This is an eye opening and heartbreaking read. More needs to be done to help homeless people and there needs to be more long term solutions.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

No Fixed Abode by Maeve McClenaghan is a shocking book as well as an important one. From rough sleeping being virtually eliminated a few years ago to a common sight in our cities is a real disgrace in a supposedly caring society. The book is all the more powerful because Ms McClenaghan admits at the start to being like most people, hardly noticing the street sleepers until she begins her investigation. The book is subtitled ,"Life and Death Amongst Britain's Hidden Homeless" and it's sobering to say the least to read about people in this day and age starving to death, living in fear of attack and laying dead for weeks with no-one noticing.
Maeve follows the stories of various Homeless people and shows that they're people who have often lived great lives before dropping out of of sight of society, not least the CGI expert whose name is on the credits of blockbuster movies,the man who made the shortlist for the job of Stephen Hawking's assistant.
If this book doesn't make you angry nothing will,the sheer stupidity and rigidness of a system that often seems deliberately geared to tormenting and hassling the unfortunate,kicking them hard when they're already down. Many of these people are those who never would have imagined they'd ever have found themselves in such a position,others who life has kicked in the teeth from a young age to whom homelessness is just another burden.
Amongst the bad news are the uplifting tales of people who try to help,both with their time and through campaigning and practical help.
Maeve McClenaghan's investigations in the process of writing this book have already made a difference and it's uplifting to read at the end that, partly as a result of her,and those who helped,highlighting the number of deaths of Homeless people there's been a change of attitude both from Government and an increasing number of Councils.
Her big message is that the Homeless are not invisible, look around in most of our cities and you'll see them,they're people,they have names,they're not a different species or class of people...so have some humanity and at the very least realise that.

Thanks to Maeve McClanaghan , Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the review copy.

I’ve admired McLenaghan’s work as an investigative journalist for a while and was really keen to read her research into why no one was recording the deaths of homeless people.
Through interviews with families of homeless people and workers and activists, freedom of information requests, attending court and inquests, she pieces together the truth.
Through this work she forms a shocking picture of death on the streets, but more than this the stories of the lives behind them.
She realises that the maxim that we are all a few paychecks away from homelessness is not entirely accurate: many have resources such as family support and do not have the trauma of lives blighted by childhood abuse or addiction and domestic violence.
But McLenaghan’s work is not just revealing. It also has led to change such as inquiries into the deaths and the Office for National Statistics starting to collect this important data.
If you want to understand the extent of death on the streets but also the structural causes of it and what you can do to help, I would thoroughly recommend this book.