BOOKBUSTER REVIEW | Roof Less: The Housing Crisis in Words and Pictures
by Christopher Hoggins
Independently published, rrp £15
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
Four years ago, Chris, of Dweeblings fame, found himself facing homelessness. In his moving, and if you are a tenant yourself, rather terrifying, new illustrated book he relates his own experience, and that of others, in dealing with slum landlords, greedy developers, eviction notices, and farcically overstretched council services. Kafkaesque is putting it mildly. I am sure many of us will have suffered in similar ways, or know those who have.
‘Perhaps I am naïve to think that housing should be a right rather than a utopian dream but all I know is that after two years of trying to get social housing with a shopping list of eligible criteria, I feel utterly worthless and got utterly nowhere,’ he says. The previous chapters outline in detail how terribly unfit-for-purpose the support system is, how under-resourced councils are, and how one is left with zero faith in the system, or indeed with humanity. Chris is convinced that it goes beyond this, encompassing outright sadism, and it is impossible not see why he feels that way.
13 YEARS IN ONE ST LEONARDS FLAT
Most people suffer in silence, or, if they succeed in extricating themselves from the suffocating web of bureaucratic nonsense and the extreme stress of legal proceedings, simply put it behind them and move on, trying never to think about the trauma (though it will rarely stop niggling at them). Chris escaped due to some lucky breaks, though he is, naturally, still a bit paranoid that it will all fall through. That, too, is unsurprising. He had been 13 years in one St Leonards flat, then his world fell apart when his landlord sold up, and sharks took the property over. I have heard his story from many others, or variations of it, and as a 12-year tenant myself, whilst very glad my landlord is reasonable, am none-the-less permanently experiencing low-level background stress due to fear that she too will sell up.
Unlike most people, though, Chris has chosen to speak out. ‘Whilst I am all too aware that I am just another voice shouting in the dark to a government that clearly doesn’t care and a society, much of which get a warm glow inside every time that they see their own house price rise, I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t say something.’
There are many factors putting stress on the housing market. Nationally, about 40% of us are in private rental. The people that own our bedsits, flats, and houses are almost guaranteed to be in the 60% that own their own homes. Governments are prone to pander to the majority. The majority of MPs also own property they let out. The charity lobby is always less able to get their ear than developers and the construction industry are, so getting heard is difficult.
PRICED OUT OF THEIR PREVIOUS HOMES
Recently, the government announced they would, at last, be regulating Airbnb, though it is doubtful any rules and certifications will be very onerous. Scotland led the way: I haven’t yet ascertained how their policies are working out, or if England’s will bear much similarity to theirs, but from what I do know, those casually letting a spare room expect to be worst hit, rather than the real culprits who ‘buy to let’. There is no national restriction in place yet on Airbnb, nor is there on ‘second home ownership’ (though towns such as St Ives and Whitby appear to have unilaterally acted to cerb both). Both are a real and negative factor in Hastings & St Leonards housing ecology, and increasingly so in recent years.
Gentrification pushes the poor out, and on average that is renters. Factors leading to the relocation of those ‘down from London’, ‘along from Brighton’, etc to our town are varied, from retirement, through the sales pitch of the broadsheets fashion supplements flogging Dalston- or Shoreditch- on-Sea, to being, themselves, priced out of their previous homes. This is a process often put down to ‘rentier capitalism’, and most people think of this, and such concepts as ‘zones of urban transition’, in unemotive terms. Yet, with the best will in the world, it has a clear human cost.
WORST OF ALL THE BUY-TO-LET BRIGADE
Regardless of the fact that most new arrivals buying into the local property market to live are decent people, often having suffered the same pressures Chris and I feel, inevitably they are a double-edged sword, in some ways boosting parts of the overall economy here, but often destroying the livelihoods and mental health of poorer residents here before them. Then there are those buying into the local property market for second homes, who are less easy to let off the hook. Ditto the casual equity-rich buy-to-let brigade. Worst of all of the buy-to-let brigade, though, are developers with large property portfolios.
Meanwhile, there is little ‘new-build’, and when there is, the provision of ‘social housing’ required at the planning application stage all too frequently vanishes ‘on appeal’ when the build starts – if it starts, as ‘land-banking’, to keep house prices over-inflated by bottle-necking supply to keep it well below demand, is a factor too. Cash-strapped councils fail to spend the millions needed to build social housing because they simply don’t have it, and it is a fact that ‘right to buy’ is also a deterrent to spending much public money on provision.
THE ACTUAL HUMAN COST OF THIS SITUATION
But, how, you may ask, is the social-housing element of new-builds kept so much lower than councils require? Ask our post-2008 Tory government, as it is they that changed the rules: now developers can go cap in hand to the courts and plead, ‘Oh, so sorry guv, but it won’t be a financially viable project if we do that’, and pretty much get a lower, or even zero, social-housing element rubber-stamped. This in an over-inflated market. Despite a drop in house prices since lockdown, I believe about 15% locally, the market was so hugely over-inflated already that it’s impossible not to deem developers not only greedy, but outright liars.
Chris’s own mental health issues are typical side effects of the stresses homelessness puts us under, and on top of that that he is himself autistic, as he describes in another new book of his, The Illustrated Autist. If you want to gauge the actual human cost of this situation, Chris’s book is a compulsory read. Next time, I will be looking at a book that claims it can tell us ‘how to solve the housing crisis’!
Roof Less is available from Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply